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Weapons 2025 – A Witches' Brew Without the Witchcraft

I had never heard of Weapons 2025. My wife had seen a trailer and it was a cheap night at the cinema, so we had little choice but to give it a shot. I braced myself for a film that would either be a spectacular new take on a classic subgenre or just another low-budget bust. What I didn’t expect was something that felt less like a movie and more like a fever dream cobbled together from half-baked ideas and an abundance of reshoots.

Image by IMDb

A Horror That's Not Quite Horror

For a film marketed as a horror movie, Weapons 2025 has very little to do with horror. The scares are non-existent. There is a persistent, gnawing tension from the premise of children vanishing into the night, but it quickly dissolves when you realize that's all there is to it. The initial premise sets up a tantalizing mystery, but that flimsy veil is lifted within minutes, and you know exactly what is going on. What follows is not a mystery, a horror, or even a drama. It's a series of disconnected, tedious moments strung together in the hope that it will create a narrative arc.

Image by DiscussingFilm

A Problem With Perspective

This feels like a short story stretched thin to make a feature-length film. The director attempts to be creative by reshooting the same scenes from different perspectives, cutting back and forth between characters as the events unfold. But this technique adds nothing to the plot, serving only to pad the runtime and allow for one-line character bios to take up more time than necessary. Every time something interesting is about to happen, the movie cuts away to back up the timeline for another character, only to show us the same events we already saw. By the time we get back to the main thread, any sense of momentum has been lost.

Image by Bloody Disgusting

A Lack of Heart

The most egregious sin of Weapons 2025 is its complete lack of emotional substance. Despite a premise that should inspire fear and sorrow, the film is devoid of any real feeling. The parents of the missing children are just angry, not heartbroken. I don't remember a single parent crying. We get a single scene where a father struggles in a dream to tell his kid he loves him, but that's about it. There’s no heartfelt commentary on how much the parents miss their children. No meaningful subtext about being grateful for what you have or watching your children closer. The kids go missing, the parents get angry, and that’s the entire emotional journey.

Image by DMT

The Question of Purpose

This brings us to the most confounding aspect of the film: the witch and her motives. For a movie about witchcraft, there isn't any until basically the final 20 minutes. And even then, it's a muddled mess. The witch is sick and needs people to… get better? She never actually states her purpose. I assumed it was something out of Hocus Pocus, that she would steal the children's essence or something, but she does absolutely nothing with them. The film ends with a vague explanation, leaving you with the sense that you just watched a two-hour-long prelude to a plot that was never actually written.

Image by The Direct

The Misleading Critic's Take

I am utterly baffled by the positive critical and audience reviews for Weapons 2025. These people must have been watching a different movie, because the one I saw was a soulless, aimless mess. The angles were cliché, the script was weak, and the climax was anticlimactic. What a bizarre exercise in a film that goes absolutely nowhere. There can only be a handful of explanations: 1. People are so starved for a good film that the bar is so damn low that something just completed gets major praise. 2. People (like me) fell asleep in the theatre and woke up at some ok parts. 3. They simply were paid to say it was good.

Image by Variety

Final Score: 1 out of 10

This film is a prime example of an interesting premise that goes absolutely nowhere. It fails to be a horror film, a drama, or even a coherent story. The lack of genuine emotion, the frustrating narrative structure, and the pointless climax make it a complete waste of time. I want my brain cells back.

Pros:

✅ The initial premise of missing children is intriguing.

Cons:

❌ The film fails to follow through on its horror premise.

❌ The constant switching of perspectives adds nothing to the narrative.

❌ There is a complete lack of emotional depth or character arcs.

❌ The plot and climax are ultimately pointless.

❌ The central antagonist's motivations are vague and unexplained.

Verdict: An attempt that falls flat on its face and then just lies there, doing nothing.

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