Unquiet
Things

First things first: Weapons. That’s the title. Just… Weapons.

The film’s concept: a witch is using spellwork to “weaponize” people, turning them into instruments of violence through dark magic. And what do the filmmakers decide to call this? Weapons. Because when you have a potentially interesting supernatural premise about possession, control, and human bodies turned into literal weapons through witchcraft, why bother with nuance or intrigue in your title? Why not just take your core concept and reduce it to the most literal, obvious single word possible? It’s a title for an Idiocracy timeline, the kind of aggressively dumb choice that makes you wonder if anyone in the room raised their hand to suggest, perhaps, something with a shred of mystery or poetry to it.

As for what Weapons is actually about: In the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from the same third-grade class wake up at 2:17 a.m., walk out of their homes with their arms outstretched, and vanish into the night. Only one student, a quiet boy named Alex, remains. His teacher, Julia Garner, arrives at school the next morning to find her classroom empty save for this one traumatized child.

The town immediately turns on Justine. Someone spray paints “WITCH” on her car, parents hound her at meetings, and she becomes the focal point of everyone’s rage and grief. Among the devastated parents is Josh Brolin, whose obsessive investigation into his son’s disappearance leads him down increasingly dark paths. The film unfolds through multiple perspectives: the aforementioned two, as well as the school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong, who they did so dirty here), a troubled cop, and a desperate junkie.

Through this fragmented structure, which works …sorta…for about the first two perspective shifts and then becomes exhausting, we eventually discover that Alex’s “great-aunt” Gladys is actually a witch who has moved into the family home. Using bells, talismans, and blood-soaked branches, she can turn people into zombified puppets and siphon their life force to sustain herself. She had Alex bring home personal items from each of his classmates, which she used to activate and summon them to her basement, where they’ve been kept in a trance-like state ever since. Meanwhile, poor Alex has been forced to spoon-feed soup to his catatonic parents and seventeen classmates to keep them alive.

The “horror” of Gladys is almost entirely predicated on the fact that she’s old and sick. Her wrinkled skin, her frail body, her age itself, all presented as inherently monstrous and terrifying. When she puts on makeup and a wig to venture out, the film frames it as grotesque. It’s lazy shortcut horror that substitutes “eccentric old lady is scary!” and “wrinkles are bad!” for actual menace. We never even see her plan working; she looks just as decrepit at the end as the beginning. So what was the point? Why did she think stealing children’s life force would help her? The film has no answers because it hasn’t actually thought any of this through.

The characters make baffling decisions that exist only to keep the plot lurching forward. When Gladys cuts Justine’s hair for a spell, why not just grab something from her car right then? Why keep Alex alive when he becomes a massive liability—the ONLY surviving kid, living in a house with newspaper covering every window?

Yes, the police investigate Alex’s house…once. Gladys does her creaky old lady act, they leave satisfied, and that’s it. In a small town. After the most bizarre mass disappearance imaginable. With the FBI supposedly involved. Okay…? Meanwhile, the entire town has turned on Justine based on nothing, but nobody thinks the weird newspaper-covered house with the sole surviving child warrants a second look? Lordy be with the lazy writing that needs everyone to be stupid for the plot to function.

And then there’s the inexplicably dumb dream sequence where Josh Brolin sees a giant automatic weapon with “2:17” displayed on it, floating above a house. It’s heavy-handed AND ham-fisted imagery (it’s so bad I have to use both) that mistakes obviousness for profundity. A floating gun with a timestamp! Get it? Do you get it?!! The film seems desperate for you to think this means something deep, but it’s just sloppy visual shorthand. Too blunt to be unsettling, too undeveloped to serve as actual commentary. It’s probably there because Cregger thought it would look cool and vaguely Important.

The segmented structure feels like padding. The junkie and cop segments exist purely to deliver exposition and get themselves caught so they can serve as weapons in the climax. Remove them entirely and you lose twenty minutes but virtually nothing of substance.

Speaking of the climax: Alex somehow knows how to use witch magic (how? why? can anyone do this?) and turns his hypnotized classmates against Gladys. They tear her apart in a scene that can’t decide what it wants to be—is this supposed to be horrifying? Darkly funny? Both? The film lurches between treating the violence as genuinely disturbing (children ripping an elderly woman to shreds) and playing it for absurdist laughs (look how over-the-top this is!), but it never earns either response. It needed to commit to one tone or find a way to blend them skillfully, the way something like, say, Evil Dead 2 manages. Instead, you’re left watching something that feels accidentally ridiculous when it’s trying to be serious, or oddly mean-spirited when it’s trying to be fun. The spell breaks, the kids go home (wait, didn’t the opening narration say they were “never seen again”?), though most remain mute and traumatized. Alex’s parents are institutionalized. Roll credits.

I didn’t find it scary, not even remotely. Not that I need my horror to be massively scary! Sometimes, inflicting a mild sense of disquiet works just fine! But this was a few cheap jump scares, zero sustained dread. Julia Garner’s performance is flat and unengaged. Benedict Wong brings genuine warmth to Principal Marcus, and the film thanks him by having his character violently bash his boyfriend’s head in before being killed off unceremoniously in the middle of traffic. Lovely.

Weapons mistakes withholding information for building mystery, conflates visual obviousness with symbolism, and passes off “weird old lady” for a functional villain. It’s mystery-box storytelling at its most hollow. Booo!

Not exactly the auspicious start to the month I was hoping for. At least there are 30 more chances to find something better? Peep at my Notion list to get a gander of what I’d like to watch this month, maybe you’d like to watch along with me!

Looking for more 31 Days of Horror? Day One 2024 | Day One 2023 | Day One 2022 | Or check my 31 Days of Horror category for more!

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