IN WEAPONS(2025), CHILDREN VANISH, LOGIC FOLLOWS THEM, AND A WITCH COMMITS CULINARY CRIMES AGAINST STORYTELLING.
INTRO: THE PRE-SLAUGHTER MONOLOGUE
It’s Halloween weekend and you just can’t decide what you want next:
A spell? A curse? A sandwich? A Mars bar?
You settle on a movie.
Which movie?
Weapons?
Bold choice. Okay then. Let’s ruin it together.
The Plot:
Witch lady’s body is breaking down, so she recruits local youth to venture into town for soul-glow ingredients like rosemary, fingernail clippings, and the tears of an Instagram model.
Not exactly that – but spiritually, yes.
Oh no. Say it ain’t so.
You mean to tell me the overhyped, cryptically-marketed psychological horror mystery didn’t live up to the trailer that teased ‘Hereditary’ meets ‘True Crime’ meets arthouse fever dream?
Shocked. Shook. Emotionally unaffected but dramatically invested.
Is this elevated horror?
No. This is Hansel & Gretel: The Grocery Run Edition.
A witch. A child intern. Feeding soul-chowder to his zombified parents and a basement full of classmates.
This isn’t horror. This is a geriatric MLM with prosthetics.
She’s supposed to be this ancient, manipulative horror icon… but she’s also sending a second grader to CVS?
It’s like A24 horror evolved into a lifestyle brand where nothing needs to make sense as long as the lighting is moody, the score is ambient dread, and someone’s crying in a linen shirt.
And so – with salt in our veins and sarcasm in our hearts – we lovingly (not lovingly) dismantle this cinematic beige casserole…
In 13 jagged slices…
I. SETUP:
WHAT IS THIS MONSTROSITY?
- ‘A MULTI-PERSPECTIVE HORROR EPIC’
Translation: we stitched five half-baked storylines into a cinematic chimera and called it ‘complex’. It’s like watching five people scream in different languages inside a haunted Apple Store. Cohesion? Never met her. - SOUP AS A PLOT DEVICE
Nothing says ‘terrifying ancient evil’ like… broth.
She’s not sacrificing goats or harvesting shadows – she’s feeding enchanted Campbell’s to basement hostages. It’s like ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, except where it isn’t. - THE ENERGY OF AN ELDERLY WITCH
(SUBTITLED ‘MA’AM, THIS IS A RITE AID’)
Let me guess: she wants to steal the life force of children, or consume youth like it’s protein powder, or something equally subtle and definitely not done a thousand times since ‘Hocus Pocus’ and ‘The Witcher’ got drunk and had a baby. - TRAILER MISDIRECTION SO EVIL IT SHOULD BE ON TRIAL
The trailer made it look like ‘The Witch’ meets ‘Prisoners’ meets ‘Annihilation’. Instead we got The Rehearsal (but sadder) meets Nothing Happens and Then It Ends. You were catfished, friend.
II. MIDDLE: CHARACTER MELTDOWNS + PLOT MADNESS
- THE ART OF DOING NOTHING, PAINFULLY
Julia Garner’s character had the emotional depth of a haunted dish sponge – silent, soggy. You get it. - JOSH BROLIN LOOKS LIKE HE WANTS OUT
You can almost hear him thinking, ‘I could’ve been in ‘Deadpool 3’ right now’. - ‘HE’S JUST A KID’ BUT ALSO MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD ACT
So this emotionally shattered, soup-hauling 10-year-old suddenly becomes ‘Kevin McCallister: Witchhunter’ and masterminds the uprising? Sure. Because trauma makes you tactical? - THE BASEMENT KIDS TURN INTO A ZOMBIE UPRISING BECAUSE PLOT
They get lured, stored, drained, and forgotten – until the plot needs them to go full undead uprising. They’ve been soul-sucked and half-dead for the whole film, but suddenly – BOOM! – they too are tactical murder goblins. They rip the witch apart like a horde of sugar-starved raccoons and we’re supposed to be terrified?
III. THEMES & ‘MEANING’: LOLOLOL
- ‘IT’S AMBIGUOUS’ AKA LAZY WRITING
Every time something made no sense, it wasn’t a plot hole – it was symbolic. Did the children disappear, or were they metaphors? Was the witch real, or a projection of collective dysfunction? Was the entire third act just a dream within a flashback within an unpaid therapy bill? We’ll never know – because the writers didn’t either. - DEEP THEMES WITH THE DEPTH OF A RAIN PUDDLE
This movie thinks it’s saying something profound about loss, grief, and the human condition – but it’s mostly just whispering ‘trauma’ into a fog machine. Every character is sad, but nobody’s compelling. Every moment begs to be dissected in a freshman Reddit thread titled ‘Weapons and the Metaphor of the Basement’, but nothing actually lands. - THE ENDING IS A CRIME AGAINST CLOSURE
Don’t pretend it was ‘open to interpretation’! It was open to confusion, rage, and Wikipedia. I shouldn’t need to search fan theories to feel like my time meant anything.
IV. AESTHETIC DEATH & FINAL SLAP
- THE WITCH DIES LIKE A LOONEY TUNES VILLAIN
She’s torn apart by children she literally farmed like crops, and it’s not as much terrifying as it’s terrifying slapstick. - EVERY SHOT IS MOODY BUT EMPTY
The aesthetic is Grim IKEA. Beige house. Sad piano. Drawn curtains. Dim lamp. More beige. A closet. More soup. The whole thing looks like it was shot inside a dream journal left out in the rain.
And so, Weapons ($$) wins – not as art, but as a test of critical thinking that most people failed. May the witch feast on their souls next – they were already halfway to broth anyway…
‘A beautiful void. I felt nothing, and wept.’ – The Atlantic, probably.
But from us – zero cicada shells out of ten!
No scares, no stakes, no spellcraft. Just a deeply confused soup witch, a traumatized child with grocery bags, and a town that apparently forgot what ‘mandatory reporting’ is.
PS First off – cicadas don’t even appear in the actual movie, which is a loss, because we had to insert them into the discourse as if they belonged. That’s how deeply this film feels like it should’ve had a cicada metaphor! It’s the kind of film that wants you to think a bug molt on a windowsill means something profound.
PS1 – cicada ratings are it! See below.
Obviously, prompted by this mess, we invented a whole new critical language. It’s earthy, weird and vaguely apocalyptic. It implies molting happened and nothing good came of it.
10 Cicadas – Biblical-level horror. I shed layers. I saw God.
7 Cicadas – Solid emotional molting. Would recommend.
5 Cicadas – Buzzed for a while, then died under a porch light.
2 Cicadas – Confused noises in the trees. Plot unclear.
0 Cicadas – No shell, no bug, just dampness and regret.
