Blunt Weapon

Since I owed Ms. Spenser a movie, we tried a recent horror, Weapons (2025), by Zach Cregger.

It starts with a little girl telling a story in voice-over. It's about how one day, grade school teacher Julia Garner came to class and only found one boy there. It turns out that the previous night, at 2:17 AM, all the other children woke up and left their houses. They ran into the darkness with their arms out and behind them, as creepily shown on some security cameras. These children couldn't be found. The remaining boy, Cary Christopher, wasn't able to give investigators any information.

The townspeople suspected Garner of something. They painted "Witch" on her car. Her principle, Benedict Wong, put her on leave. She started drinking (again), and hooked up with her old boyfriend, patrolman Alden Ehrenreich.  She also started to investigate Christopher, who seemed to just want to be left alone. But there's something funny about his house...

The focus shifts to Josh Brolin, father of one of the missing children (one of the children who used to bully Christopher). He isn't going to rest and let the police bungle this investigation.

Again the focus shifts to Ehrenreich. We learn that he's a recovering alcoholic now married to the police chief's daughter, June Diane Raphael. He stops a meth head from breaking into a warehouse and gets a needle prick, beats up the junkie and lets him go.

And so on. The film shifts perspective, sometimes sliding the timeline back to before the disappearances. The horror starts slowly, with a lot of social and psychological stuff, with Garner being ostracized, threatened and slowly going out of control. There are hints of the supernatural, before you get a to the third act, where you discover what has been going on. 

I won't tell you what that is, but I have to mention Amy Madigan as sweet, creepy Aunt Lilly. There's something about a cheery, controlling old lady that really gets you. 

In the end, Ms. Spenser wasn't satisfied with this. It got a little silly, especially the ending, which was basically comedy-horror. So I still owe her.