WEAPONS: A Wild, Twisted Ride

WEAPONS (Blu-ray)

2025 / 128 min

Warner Bros

#InPartnershipwithWB

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

I have a feeling that being a Zack Cregger fan is going to be something of a challenge. 

Reviewing his first film, Barbarian, a few years ago, I had the good fortune of knowing absolutely zero about the premise or plot. In addition to being extremely well written and atmospheric, to say nothing of brutal, it repeatedly surprised me with its story turns and dramatic tonal shifts. That unpredictability was a big part of what made it the best horror film of 2022. 

While elevated expectations were probably unavoidable, I did manage to avoid learning anything about Cregger’s Weapons beyond the title and an intriguing trailer that revealed little (the way all of trailers should be). That wasn’t easy because, unlike Barbarian, this one was a blockbuster and all the hype made the internet a virtual minefield. So it was with a sense of victory that my daughters and I bought our tickets over a week into the movie’s theatrical run…

…and not only did Weapons live up to the hype, it surpassed my expectations. Like Barbarian, it’s a wild, original film that's best viewed cold, so consider yourself lucky if you’re able to. Because of this, I’ll avoid revealing the plot in any detail, which begins with the unexplained disappearance of 17 children from a small suburbia. At exactly 2:17 AM, they simply wake up, leave their homes and run off into the night.

When the ice cream truck arrives past curfew.

Obviously, the children' s disappearance is central to the narrative, but the story is no mere mystery. It’s still primarily a horror film - and a pretty brutal one, too - but divided into intersecting chapters, each presented from a specific character’s point of view somewhat akin to Kurosawa’s Rashomon. With each chapter comes unexpected plot or character revelations - some which are shocking - and it all comes together for a memorable climax.

This time around, Cregger infuses his intelligent story with unexpected personal drama and twisted black comedy, the latter of which I suspect some horror purists may not appreciate. But as someone who enjoys my expectations being subverted, I thought it was a great touch. Elsewhere, the story features an ensemble of engaging, believable characters, all well-performed by a great cast (including Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich and Amy Madigan). 

Overall, 2025 has been a pretty damn good year for smart, original horror, with the likes of Sinners, Bring Her Back and now Weapons ranking among the best of them. Here’s hoping Zack Cregger remains this dedicated to unpredictability for the rest of his career, even if it does keep me off the internet for a couple of weeks every few years (which probably ain’t a bad thing)

EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTES - Director Zack Cregger: Making Horror Personal; Weaponized: The Cast of Weapons; Weapons: Texture of Terror. Each featurette runs 6-10 minutes, and their titles are more-or-less explanatory.

BRING HER BACK: Grim, Gruesome and Great

BRING HER BACK (Blu-ray)

2025 / 104 min

A24 Films

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

As I get older, I tend to base my horror choices on who’s directing them, rather than a killer trailer, plot synopsis or who happens to be in the cast. Trust me, 50+ years of watching a genre where the bad ones far outnumber the good ones can do that to you. 

But in general, horror is in a good place right now, with quite a few directors committed to creating smart, atmospheric films that either offer something we haven’t seen before, or at least put a unique spin on a familiar premise. Jordan Peele, Robert Eggers, Zach Cregger and Ari Aster are directors whose movies I’m totally on-board for without even knowing what they’re about. In fact, I prefer go into them cold. 

After catching Bring Her Back, I’m probably adding sibling directors Danny and Michael Philippou to that list. Their first film, 2022’s Talk to Me, was a wonderfully twisted surprise, which did slightly elevate my expectations for this one. Though maybe just a tad less narratively cohesive, Bring Her Back is another brutal banger of a horror film.

Luckily, I was able to check this one out completely cold as well, so for the sake of those reading this who are similarly unaware, I’ll refrain from going into much detail about the premise or plot. But like Talk to Me, this one centers around a couple of siblings, 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and functionally-blind younger sister Piper (Sora Wong). After their father suddenly dies, they’re placed in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former counselor whose own daughter died from drowning. Also living there is a selectively-mute young boy, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who lurks around the house wearing nothing but a swimsuit.

Guess who just gave her cat a bath.

Right from the get-go, we sense something’s not quite right about Laura, even though she doesn’t initially say or do anything particularly sinister. However, Hawkins’ note-perfect performance immediately has us on-edge. Most of the story takes place in and around Laura’s house, but to reveal much beyond that would spoil the fun. The narrative unfolds at a deliberate pace and never spoonfeeds the audience with details or exposition that ultimately don’t matter. 

What does matter is the forboding tone, complex characters and increasing sense of dread, and for anyone who assumes the somewhat ominous title suggests a movie akin to Pet Sematary, you’ve got no idea what’s in store for you. Bring Her Back is relentlessly downbeat and grim, punctuated by shocking bursts of violence and gore that’ll have some viewers squirming. At the same time, it's often emotionally affecting and thought provoking.

Only near the end do a few minor cracks appear, perhaps exacerbated by the Philippous trying a little too hard to juggle psychological and supernatural horror elements (one could argue that they should've chosen one or the other). Still, Bring Her Back is an atmospheric, compellingly dark ride, boosted by a perceptive writing (especially regarding the characters) and excellent performances. These two directors are definitely on a roll.

EXTRA KIBBLES

COMING FULL CIRCLE: MAKING BRING HER BACK - 20-minute featurette with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. I suspect Danny and Michael Philippou are pretty fun to tip a few back with.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By Danny and Michael Philippou.

SIX BEHIND-THE-SCENES POSTCARDS - A24 seems to be doing this with most of their releases. A nice touch.

THE BEAST TO DIE and a "Date" with Madness

THE BEAST TO DIE (Blu-ray)

1980 / 119 min

Radiance Films

Review by Stinky the Destroyer😾

Kunihiko Date (Yusaku Matsuda) is one maladjusted mofo. Japan's The Beast to Die opens with him beating a cop and stealing his gun. Then he robs a casino, killing a bunch of mobsters in the process. But Date isn’t a gangster or hitman himself. In fact, the film initially reveals little about him beyond a love for classical music and his penchant for watching hookers masturbate. Around others, he appears shy, even a bit introverted.

Still, he catches the eye of Reiko (Asami Kobayashi), an aspiring pianist who works as a bank teller. Having seen her in concert, Date appears equally infatuated, though he shuns her efforts to get to know him. Meanwhile, he engages in a lot of violent fuckery, eventually recruiting hot-headed waiter Endo (Kei Sato). After convincing Endo to kill his own girlfriend, Date plans a robbery of the very bank where Reiko works. 

It’s eventually revealed that Date's psychotic behavior is the result of his time as a combat photographer. So yeah, The Beast to Die serves-up yet-another variation of the unstable Vietnam vet, which more-or-less became an overused plot device shortly after Taxi Driver. But here’s the thing…despite his violent tendencies and disturbing worldview, at least Travis Bickle has something resembling a moral code (twisted as it might be). 

"This is decaf?"

Conversely, Date’s character is strictly defined by his actions, which is abject cruelty and killing without remorse while spouting nihilistic gobbledegook. Whereas Bickle’s internal conflict ultimately inspires a bit of empathy, The Beast to Die simply revels in its protagonist’s depraved behavior. The film certainly ventures to some dark places, but despite being wrapped in arty pretentions, it’s still just lurid exploitation, particularly during the rapey, blood-soaked final act.

The Beast to Die does have its admirers, and I can sort-of see why. The film is well directed and features a dedicated performance by Matsuda, probably best known to American audiences for his villainous role in Ridley Scott’s Black Rain (sadly, he passed away shortly after). But narratively, there’s no character arc or engaging examination of Date’s descent into madness. We’re just watching the actions of a unrepentant sociopath for two hours. 

EXTRA KIBBLES

INTERVIEWS - Individual interviews with director Toru Murakawa and co-screenwriter Shoichi Maruyama.

CRITICAL APPRECIATION - By author Jordan Harper

EXPERIMENT IN TERROR: Ross the Boss

EXPERIMENT IN TERROR (Blu-ray)

1962 / 123 min

Sony

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Mr. Paws😺

Blake Edwards’ legacy has him largely associated with comedies, probably for good reason since some of them rank among his best. But he directed plenty of films in other genres to varying degrees of success. One of them was 1962’s Experiment in Terror, a nifty piece of neo-noir starring Glenn Ford and Lee Remick.

Remick plays Kelly Sherwood, a bank teller who’s threatened at home with an ultimatum by a shadowy figure: Steal $100,000 from the bank where she works. If Kelly fails, refuses or calls the police, not only will he kill her, but kid sister Toby (a very young Stephanie Powers). Still, she does manage to alert FBI agent John Ripley (Glenn Ford), who immediately puts both sisters under constant surveillance while trying to ID and locate the man before Kelly’s forced to commit the robbery.

The suspect turns out to be a man named Garland “Red” Lynch, who has not-only committed previous robberies in the same manner, he’s a dangerous, sadistic killer who also appears to be sort of a pedophile. For me, the big surprise of the film is that Red is played by none other than Ross Martin. I’m used to seeing him in such lighter TV fare as The Wild, Wild West and The Twilight Zone. But not only is Martin wonderfully disturbing as Red, he manages to steal the film from his bigger co-stars (and was nominated for a Golden Globe).

Waiting for the next available agent.

Elsewhere, Ford is his reliable solid self, giving his no-nonsense character quiet intensity. I’ll be upfront and confess I’ve never been a huge fan of Remick, and here, she’s required to do little outside of her wheelhouse, which is to look terrified. It doesn’t help that her character isn’t particularly interesting to begin with. But hey, somebody has to be put in peril…otherwise we wouldn’t get the tension filled climax set at a crowded ballpark.

Experiment in Terror is a little overlong, and I can’t help but feel that a director who specializes in crime thrillers could have tidied up the story to a brisk 90 minutes. Still, the film is stylishly directed by Edwards, who deftly incorporates a film noir aesthetic to the largely police procedural story. The result is one his better films outside of the comedy genre.

Stay Out of THE BASEMENT

THE BASEMENT (Blu-ray)

2018 / 88 min

From Uncork’d Entertainment

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat

The Basement is essentially torture porn, and like The Passion of the Christ, nearly the entire film consists of extreme torment being inflicted on one guy. The only real difference is one purports to be a horror movie, while the other is considered required viewing for some Christians (though I’m still not sure how watching Jesus in agony for two hours brings them closer to him). 

I don’t think I’d consider The Basement to be horror, either. Sadism for its own sake isn’t horror. Even the film that came to define torture porn for modern audiences (Hostel) managed to instill enough atmospheric dread to qualify as horror. But here, we’re mostly just curious about what awful thing its main character endures next, and how convincing the make-up effects are.

The victim is Craig Owen (Cayleb Long), a famous musician who’s running an errand for his wife, Kelly (Mischa Barton), when he’s abducted by a serial killer known as The Gemini (Jackson Davis). Craig is bound to a school desk in a dank basement while his captor repeatedly adopts different personalities and guises, each who address him as Bill (The Gemini’s actual name). Some of these personalities condemn “Bill” for his murders, others assault him gruesomely and graphically.

Extreme detention.

But while the make-up effects are indeed pretty convincing, the film isn’t scary or suspenseful. It’s relentlessly talky between torture scenes and serves up a protagonist who isn't interesting or engaging enough to invest in…just a rich guy cheating on his wife. Speaking of which, at least a third of the narrative focuses on Kelly, who laments that Craig hasn’t come home but never appears worried something bad has happened to him. That, coupled with the dull chats she has with her bestie, Bianca, pretty much telegraphs the twist ending writer-directors Brian M. Conley & Nathan Ives are obviously proud of.

The performances are mostly perfunctory, save for Davis, who’s admittedly impressive adopting all those different personas (12 of them, to be exact). Other than that, The Basement is a movie that’s far more in love with its torture sequences and predictable denouement than creating anything resembling true horror.

EXTRA KIBBLES

ALTERNATE OPENING - With a bonus several head for your troubles.

MUSIC VIDEO

Revisiting SE7EN in 4K

SE7EN (4K UHD)

1995 / 127 min

From Warner Bros.

#InPartnershipwithWB

Review by Mr. Paws😺

I guess we can add David Fincher to the list of directors compelled to go back and tweak with his movies (even if they don’t need tweaking). But unlike George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Ridley Scott, he doesn’t mess with the content or narrative of Se7en…just a few CGI enhancements here and there that I doubt most viewers will even notice. 

Still, those changes are there, which I’m sure will raise the hackles of the few purists who’ve committed every single frame to memory. For cinephiles who still venture outdoors on occasion, this 4K UHD version - overseen by Fincher - looks and sounds tremendous…a fitting restoration for the film’s 30th Anniversary.

Wow, has it really been that long? It seems like just yesterday everyone at work was talking about this one. Still, I was a tad skeptical at the time because, not only did I assume Se7en was just another serial killer movie in the wake of Silence of the Lambs, it was directed by the same guy who just took a massive dump on Alien’s legacy. But curiosity eventually got the best of me and I dragged the wife along with me to check it out…

Brad in time-out.

…and I was floored. With its relentlessly grim take on your standard police procedural, Se7en was nothing like Silence of the Lambs. The beautifully grimy aesthetic enhances its bleak tone, creating an immersive experience in which our most recurring emotional response is dread. And since there was not much of an internet for dumbass doorknobs to drop spoilers, the twist ending was a jaw dropper that I didn’t see coming. My wife was horrified. So was I, but in a good way because, even today, it isn’t often that a major studio film has the cajones to end on such a dour note.

With this one film, David Fincher was suddenly a director to watch, Brad Pitt escaped his pretty boy image and “What’s in the box?” became part of our vernacular (eventually an overused meme). It also features one of Morgan Freeman’s best performances, which should have at-least gotten an Oscar nomination (with the exception of an editing nod, the film was shamefully snubbed that year).

Three decades later, Se7en has aged remarkably well and remains a wonderfully unnerving film, even if that climax no longer has the power to shock as it once did. But like Planet of the Apes, that’s due more to its cultural impact than the cruelty of time. While the 4K edition nicely presents the film in all its grimy glory, there aren’t any new bonus features and the outer packaging is pretty similar to a DVD set released by New Line 25 years ago. This one is for those interested in a technical upgrade…or David Fincher’s CGI enhancements.

EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTES - Production Design; Mastering for Home Theater; Exploring the Opening Title Sequence.

EPK

4 AUDIO COMMENTARIES - 1) By director David Fincher, actors Morgan Freeman & Brad Pitt; 2) By writer Andrew Kevin Walker, director David Fincher, editor Richard-Francis Bruce, New Line president of production Michael De Luca; 3) By writer Andrew Kevin Walker, director David Fincher, cinematographer Darius Khondji, production designer Arthur Max. 4) By composer Howard Shore, sound designer Ren Klyce, director David Fincher.

ALTERNATE ENDING - With optional commentary and storyboards.

6 DELETED SCENES - With optional commentary.

6 STILL GALLERIES

DIGITAL COPY

STRANGE DARLING is Best Served Cold

STRANGE DARLING (Blu-ray)

2024 / 96 min

FROM MAGENTA LIGHT STUDIOS

Review by Princess Pepper😺

Strange Darling is another one of those movies where knowing anything about the plot beforehand destroys the fun of watching it. And trust me, you want to go into this one cold because it’s one of the more surprising and original thrillers released this year.

So I’m gonna forgo the usual plot synopsis, other than saying it involves a one-night stand gone wrong and a serial killer. Strange Darling has a nonlinear narrative presented in six chapters, beginning with Chapter 3. But this isn’t some kind of gimmicky stunt by writer-director JT Mollner. To tell this story in sequence would totally ruin all of his surprises…most of which you will not see coming. It hooks us with a thrilling start that the comparatively dull first chapter wouldn’t have.

Strange Parking.

We’re frequently lured into thinking we know what’s happening. But just when you figure you’ve got the plot and characters pegged, another chapter comes along to undermine your assumptions. Every story turn is another piece of the puzzle which, when completed, reveals a a twisted, bloody picture. It’s only during Chapter 6 and the epilogue that the film becomes more conventional (and maybe just a bit draggier). But even with all the pieces now in place and the plot twists behind us, the wild and violent finale is worth sticking around for. 

The two main characters, The Lady and The Demon, are well conceived and benefit from lively performances by Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner. Elsewhere, the film is generally well-paced and looks really good, thanks to some impressive cinematography (by Giovanni Ribisi, of all people). A great little thriller, Strange Darling makes being misled a helluva lotta fun.