WEAPONS (2025)

This critically & commercially well-received, darkly-comic Body Horror from writer/director Zach Creggar even earned a rare acting Oscar® for the genre.  Good scary fun, if ultimately less than meets the gashed eyeball.  It opens poorly, with needless narration from a wise-for-her-years child giving us too much info, and Creggar defensively covering with a plethora of ‘shock cuts.  But things rapidly improve once Grade School Teacher Julia Garner finds all but one of her kids, Alex, absent.  Make that missing.  As if the Pied Piper had tootled them away in the night.  Angry suspicions fall on the teacher, but no evidence.  No matter, she’s dubbed a witch by locals.  (Another error, make that a cheat, from Creggar removes any serious investigation of the house & parents of Alex, the boy who stayed in town when they ought to be swarming the joint.)  Still, this prologue enough like a classic TWILIGHT ZONE opening to get you interested.  (Actually, it’s more like a ONE STEP BEYOND episode, but who remembers that paranormal knock-off.)  And this is where you wonder how one of those half-hour shows can possibly support a two+ hour film.  (Spoiler Alert!)  Answer, it doesn’t.  Instead, Creggar switches to HANSEL & GRETEL, but without Gretel.  (Hansel & Hansel?)  With spooky Great Aunt (that’s award-winner Amy Madigan in fright wig & makeup) as the witch who’s capturing little boys and girls to fatten up before getting the life’s essence out of them.  (Sustained only by cans & cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.)  A few gory visual effects; hop/skip & jump character continuity for some non-linear surprise explanations; and a nifty semi-heroic turn from grieving parent Josh Brolin (head squarer than ever) also helps.  Just be aware: some gory effects nearly as ‘grimm’ as those famous Brothers.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  One unhappy comic-horror throwback sees the return of a trope from the 1970s that saw either the FIRST or the WORST/most realistic gory violence hit the one significant Black in the movie.  Now, this spot goes to the film’s main gay character (and his husband).