It's a peculiarity of mine - I don't try to rationalize it anymore.

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2025

#3 :  Weapons

Images of sheer dread. Unexpected moments of laugh-out-loud comedy. Major narrative swerves. Weapons took everything that made Zach Cregger’s Barbarian such a horror hoot and amped it all up, in a perspective-hopping, head-smashing, spell-casting blast. It all begins with Justine (Julia Garner), a school teacher who finds one day that all her students ran out into the darkness overnight and didn’t return. From there, Cregger paints a portrait of the entire town of Maybrook as it deals with the disappearance – and other occulty occurrences – from Josh Brolin’s grieving father Archer, to unravelling cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, borrowing John C. Reilly’s Magnolia ‘tache), junkie James (Austin Abrams) and headteacher Marcus (Benedict Wong). There are heart-stopping scares here, brilliantly executed, and Aunt Gladys is an instant horror icon – but Weapons’ greatest weapon is its funny bone, proving rictus terror and raucous laughter can be perfect bedfellows.

This got plenty of good write-ups, but other than the central kids-disappearing concept, I didn't really get any idea as to what it was about so I wasn't sure if I'd like it, particularly because me and horror don't always get on (although I'd have to say Empire's recommendations have generally been pretty decent). But now I get to find out what it's all about...

...and having watched it, I get to try and decide how much I should explain it. We start (very briefly) with the kids disappearing and then jump forward some amount of time (it did tell me, but I don't remember) to see how the town is coping. Well, I say "the town" but to start with the focus is very much on how Miss Gandy (Julia Garner), the children's teacher, is coping - and the short answer is "not very well". And for a surprising length of time, we don't actually learn a lot else and it also didn't give you any clues as what kind of film it was - I was wondering exactly what everyone saw in this. 

However, as the film progresses, the focus switches to different characters (not always obviously connected, but links emerge) and details are drip-fed through to us which are enough to keep us intrigued without giving too much of the game away - and we learn it's a sci-fi/horror/thriller kinda thang. Apart from that, the less you know the about it all, the better - but I do feel I can tell you that Aunt Gladys really is quite the character. 

Julia Garner is, of course, excellent in this and, whilst she has the main role, the character-focussed nature of the story means that Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong and Cary Christopher all get plenty of time to impress. And we have to specifically call out Cary Christopher who he does a great job despite being only ten years old - but he's been acting since he was TWO and has already been nominated for an Emmy!

And then there's Amy Madigan who plays Aunt Gladys - I thought she was good, but I was surprised at how good others thought she was. Because, at the age of 78, she only went and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress - she had previously been nominated in '86 (for Twice In A Lifetime) which also means she has the longest gap between nominations for an actress (Judd Hirsch holds the record for a 42 year gap between Ordinary People and The Fabelmans). She's been in loads of stuff over the years but the only other things I think I've seen that she's been in are Field Of Dreams (she plays Kevin Costner's wife) and Carnivale (and I'd completely forgotten how much I enjoyed that).

Like a lot of the horror films (and that's certainly where it ends up) Empire serves up, this is very well written. It has a great central concept and it runs with it well, kinda explaining what happens (in a most ridiculous fashion obviously, but it hangs together for me). I can also say it has a very satisfactory ending - these type of things often have a habit of running out of ideas but this delivers well right up to the end. The other thing to point out is that it is, in places, really quite funny and in a surprisingly unsignposted manner - you find yourself laughing before you realise it. Except for the end, where you know exactly what's going to happen and it results in a weird form of horror slapstick, which nonetheless works surprisingly well.

It's also well shot. For the most part it's grounded in reality so everything is pretty straightforward, but when it takes a swerve into the realms of fantasy or horror then it does it well - one of the bits with Benedict Wong is REALLY horrible. It also uses the camera angles and the light well - obviously there's plenty of dark about, but you never get the impression you can't see what's going on (which is a problem I have a lot). And since Zach Creggar both wrote it and directed it, I think we have to declare him to be a pretty talented guy (and so I might have to check out Barbarian) - it also made $270 million off a budget of $38 million, so I reckon the producers were pretty happy with him. The other thing I learned of interest from Google is that 170 children were on set on the busiest days - it must have been carnage!

Once again, Empire delivered with their horror film recommendation - it's done well and I really enjoyed it. Which tells you I don't really think it's a horror film at all, but it certainly has horror elements to it (and I won't be recommending it to my mum). It's more that I view it as a well acted and shot film with an interesting central concept which it runs well with, taking it to a satisfying conclusion - I don't ask for much really! If you fancy it, it's available to stream on Sky or HBO Max or to rent in all the usual other places and it's a strong recommendation from me if you can handle some horror elements.

#4 - A lovely film