WEAPONS

Fear Scale :⭐⭐⭐☆☆

My rating: 6/10

Press Rating: 7,6 / 10

(Based on IMDb, Letterboxd, and AlloCiné)

Year:2025

Duration:2h08

Before discovering Weapons, I had seen its trailer at the cinema, shown before another horror movie released this year, and honestly, it didn’t convince me. The plot seemed rather cliché and the atmosphere a bit too conventional to really spark my curiosity (I also struggle with horror movies that use children as the main frightening element: I often find it poorly executed, more “cringe” than scary). Still, intrigued nonetheless, I decided to give the film a chance and make up my own mind. And I’m glad I did, because Weapons contains some ideas that I found very interesting.

First of all, what struck me right away is how the film begins immediately. The children’s escape is the triggering event, and since 99% of the audience already knew about this part before even watching the movie, the director wastes no time introducing something everyone knows is bound to happen. Within five minutes, the foundations are set, and the story dives straight into the investigation and a plot that, this time, we truly get to discover.

Another interesting aspect is that the story is divided into chapters, each one following the plot from the perspective of a different character. This brings real diversity in terms of scenes and viewpoints, and builds the narrative like a puzzle. Each perspective provides answers to questions left hanging in the previous chapter, leading up to the final point of view that allows us to understand the whole story and where it all began.

That said, there are a few flaws worth mentioning. The film relies a bit too much on jump scares. Like many modern horror movies, Weapons falls into this easy scare tactic that I find quickly tiresome. It’s a shame, because the film is clearly capable of instilling fear in other, far more effective ways: the car scene is proof of that, and it doesn’t need any cheap jolts to work.

I also felt that some chapters dragged on a little too much. The one focused on Paul, for instance, seemed rather unnecessary to me: his point of view doesn’t really bring any new information compared to what we already knew, and it somewhat breaks the overall rhythm of the story. It feels as if the film is trying to artificially stretch its runtime, when it would have been stronger by sticking to the essentials. Cutting this chapter, or at least condensing it, would have maintained a more consistent tension and avoided certain slow moments. 

On the other hand, I have to commend the film for successfully balancing dark comedy with pure horror. The two tones coexist without ever undermining one another, and the audience in the theater reacted especially well to these moments.

In conclusion, Weapons is a good film that, overall, achieves its ambitions and manages to entertain any horror fan. I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece, some flaws prevent full immersion, but it still stands as a solid and interesting entry in today’s horror landscape.