Weapons Review
Review of Weapons (2025) by screenqueeen: π 2/5
hooptober 12 clock shot tally: 11 (2 clocks: 1 analog, 1 digital)
32/100
Zach Cregger is really good at making nothing into something very watchable. the way this is broken up suggests there is some kind of hidden angle to how Gladys has inserted herself into the community of Maybrook. the RASHΕMON approach usually means you're saying something about how people interpret events and read into human intent within greater contexts of society and... there's fucking nothing of the sort here. an episode of the simpsons has more sense of established community even removed from any outside knowledge about the show; someone who has never seen it could tell you what Springfield is like despite spending less than 20 mins seeing it through windows in the background. what this seemed in perfect position to do was say something about the 24/7 surveillance state consumers and families contribute to due to their own free will, while their children's (and other people's) free will essentially becomes overwritten for one individual's unknown agenda.
there is so much potential in this movie that simply evaporates. yeah, Gladys is the best in this by far but she's the only interesting character. but the impatient nature of this town and an apparent tendency to give way to mob mentality following a mysterious event begetting a potential tragedy is never reflected upon. Archer bumps up against law enforcement trying to find his son and takes on the investigation himself but when he supersedes the wishes of another missing kid's mother there is no acknowledgment whatsoever (i think it was just some tiny deus ex machina wrapped in a pathetic Justin Long cameo. can we stop with this guy now please). there are no consequences. the only real ones are Gladys's and that sequence is fun if not feeling like you're just watching a music video at points. we never get a why or any kind of peek into what the fuck Gladys was even up to but i don't care about that, thankfully Cregger understood that and didn't bother. that's one point in his favor here but the biggest failing is how it seems to call upon the weight of having this small yet completely engulfing society turned upside down by essentially one person, but it never earns that weight. at every turn there is an insistence that the tight-knit community is everything to these people. i never get that through anyone's eyes. the townspeople are pretty much faceless, fodder for a quick and dirty attempt at building stakes. yet WEAPONS persists in telling us that this is so much about its community
Justine is the target of a lazy witch-hunt and experiences the vacuum of support from the townspeople, Archer constantly overrides anything he can as exemplified above, Paul is a shitty person who abuses his powers as a cop (surprise!) and emotionally abuses two women, Alex doesn't have a grasp of what the town really is beyond his small version of events. the only one here that feels like someone who lives in and can benefit by the support of others is James. his fate is truly tragic. but he's swept aside in service of the larger narrative and to try and put the sympathetic treatment squarely on Alex and his immediate family* (i was so excited to see Whitmer Thomas in this, i loved him in THE CIVIL DEAD and you should drop this review to go watch that, like, right now. but he doesn't get anything to do past be a stereotypical breadwinner dad with his own version of "hey champ how was school today" before he gets sucked out of the whole thing). also i completely missed that Toby Huss was in this (Cotton Hill/Kahn Souphanousinphone and the new Dale from King of the Hill, another example i could've used here. rest in peace Johnny Hardwick. rest in peace Jonathan Joss.), another character actor that didn't really get a chance to do much. anyway this sucks.
*going with the simpsons comparisons i would put James somewhere within a Bart/Otto hybrid with some early inclinations of Snake