Weapons (2025)

I was able to watch this on a recent flight with an excellent in flight screen, and while I am not a fan of the horror genre, this was very well done and genuinely creepy. I may be in a decided majority, but I love watching movies in the air, especially when I score a seat with a large screen. It just makes travel so enjoyable. One thing is that it’s not overly difficult to read the inciting incident of the movie as a school shooting allegory. In this case, 17 children got out of bed at 2:17 a.m. and ran into the night, their arms slightly outstretched and look identical. They are captured on doorbell cams, which is a great way to see that they wer not led away by someone, but rather that they seem possessed. It’s a chilling image, one that tears a neighborhood apart, revealing the rage and horror behind the picket fences. So the teacher Justine Gandy, who is young and earnest, comes into school the next morning to find her entire classroom absent. Well, not entirely. One child, a quiet kid named Alex , didn’t leave his house that night. Why? Instead of going down that investigative avenue to its end, the town chooses to weaponize its hatred for Gandy herself, labeling her a witch. She must have done something. Or she must know something. The movie unfolds in a kind of controlled chaos, and comes to a surprisingly unexpected end. It is both terrifying and enjoyable simultaneously.