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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

It is not often that a horror films appears to tickle the right nerves from the high-brow crowd of cinema critics. With 93% Rotten Tomatoes score though, it is safe to assume that Zach Cregger's Weapons from 2025 is one of those rare movies.

I was kind of afraid to take a look at it, to be honest, thinking that a movie about kids disappearing at night might involve some of that Lars Von Trier sauce of that I fear so much about. That is why I'm avoiding Bring Her Back by the Philippou brothers. I've been in the cinema auditorium for the last few minutes of that film. And they are trying to take the child-gore crown from Von Trier. Don't ask me what I did in the auditorium for just the last few minutes. But those were enough to convince me that I don't want to watch that film. And frankly it made me scared to watch this film. But then seeing Destry Allyn Spielberg's Please Don't Feed The Children and how she dealt with a similar subject matter, I relaxed a bit. Giving myself a chance with Weapons. And oh, boy... the movie is fucking fantastic.

Right from the start you understand that Zach Cregger first of all respects kids ( because the fucking premise pretty much would not work if not for super amazing 8 year olds ). And then you also understand that he is a damn good director. From the very first shot the movie just oozes with cinema. Obviously it's shot as a horror film. It uses uncomfortable slow zooms. It uses freaky compositions. And it has an insane level of tension. The paranoia of Justine ( Julia Garner ) alone is some of the tensest stuff I've seen. To be honest though, some of it reminds me of the opening of Brian Duffield's excellent alien invasion horror film No One Will Save You. Similar kind of dark night fear of somebody might have invaded your house, stuff.

But what was rather surprising was how fucking funny this movie is. Take for example the iconic run of the kids, that is visible on the poster. So the premise is ( and it is not a spoiler, because we learn it pretty much in the first few minutes of the film ) that kids from one class pretty much run out of the house all at once, one night. Freaky stuff. Yet they ran out using the fucking anime Naruto run, lol.

And then the ending hits. You can say that it is violent and gory. I wont spoil, but an ending to a horror film usually involves somebody dying. I would say though, I was floored how fucking funny this was. It was so utterly hilarious. Yes it was fucking brutal. But that kind of made it even funnier, to be honest.

What I don't like about the ending and the general subject matter of the movie is that it kind of reminds me a feeling I had watching Osgood Perkins's Longlegs from 2024. You could argue that the two films have similarities. Both of them deal ( to some extent ) with child-abuse. But what was weird is that both of them remind me way too much, of the kind of stuff I have written for my next movie project.

Without going too much into details, the movie I wrote ( which I have a few drafts of already ) has elements from both Longlegs and Weapons and I haven't seen neither before writing those elements in. After seeing Longlegs I have even written a new draft, trying to remove some of things I feel are too similar to Longlegs and which I personally thought were a bit week in Longlegs. I don't think I will rewrite my script again. First of all, because I think that the stuff in Weapons that is similar to the stuff in the my script, works very fucking well in Weapons and the stuff that I removed ( which is kind of present in Weapons and is kind of week in Weapons too ) I already removed in my last rewrite ( I'm being vague here, to not spoil anything, because I want you to see the movies ). And also what I wrote is different enough from Weapons that I don't see a reason to rewrite anything. What is similar, besides the general subject matter, this time around, is the sense of humor of it all. Again, this damn ending made me laugh my ass off.

The film has a cool structure. When the films announced a title of "Justine" I was like Justine? A similar title with the same name was used by Lars Von Trier in Melancholia. And in both films it means we get a chapter about Justine. But while in Von Trier's film we then get a second chapter that follows from the exact point where the first chapter ends, in Weapons we get non-linear story-telling.

We get Justine's point of view, up to a certain point, which ends on a clever ( and rather creepy ) cliff-hanger. Her story is about paranoia of being accused of child-abuse.

Then we get other character's chapters that fill the blank spots in the narrative. And slowly reveal what the actual fuck is going on. But more importantly we get multiple points of view when it comes to child-abuse.

If Justine is wrongly accused of it. And then suffers from paranoia because of it. Josh Brolin's character ( who plays a father of one of the disappeared boys ) is the one suffering from it as a parent. Which creates an interesting meta-narrative. His hate towards Justine is based in a real event that is actually painful for him. And yet we know, from the previous chapter that Justine is innocent. That is some great irony there.

Then we get the cop guy perspective who is played by Alden Ehrenreich. We get a perspective of a junkie that saw something and knows something. He is played by Austin Abrams ( who kind of looks and sounds like a discount version of Timothée Chalamet ). We get a perspective from the school's principal played by Benedict Wong. And then finally we get a perspective from one of the kids played by Cary Christopher.

Now here is a thing about Cary fucking Christopher. I think we are seeing a new child star being birthed in front of our eyes. I've seen him so far in one movie, but this 8 year old motherfucker already seems to be on the level of Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel Osment or Jacob Tremblay or Julia Butters. I'm fucking serious, this Cary Christopher is a wunderkind genius of an actor. I bet Steven Spielberg is rushing his new alien picture now, because he was looking for the right kid for The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara where a little boy is a main character. But he couldn't find one that fits. Well - Cary Christopher! I'm almost sure Steve will snap him into one of his movies soon. c:0

I have too many thoughts about this film. I need to process them. I just poured my first impressions of it onto this review. But I bet I will make a deeper dive into this movie. Especially if Zach Cregger will do more of something like this in the future. Until then...

Happy Hacking!!!

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And prospects with Steven Spielberg? The kid got places to go

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