Weapons: Are All Horror Movies Now Derivative?

March 2026

 

A quick note on horror movies....

 

It appears they must all now include the following:

 

A clown or a character in clown-like makeup...

 

Should we thank Stephen King?...

 

And involve children...

 

See above...

 

Be set in a small town...

 

Which will not be portrayed positively... no surprise there

 

Someone or something bad is going to be hidden in the basement...

 

Of course... it’s dark and scary down there...

 

The bad guy will be portrayed in a way that lacks any semblance of nuance...

 

And they tend to startle rather than scare...

 

So what more can I say...

 

Except that they are uniformly boring...

 

Even if they have a decent cast...

 

As does Weapons...

 

With Julia Garner as the teacher of the missing children...

Who is the subject of one of those All American Witch Hunts...

 

Of which this country is so fond...

 

But suffice it to say...

She is a complicated character...

 

So to its credit, Weapons does have several interlocking character studies ...

 

That are slowly revealed...

Like an onion being peeled...

So they do provide some interest...

 

But none of them involve the old lady in the clown makeup...

 

So it’s just hard to take a film like this seriously....

 

Although it does appear...

 

That Amy Madigan has entered the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane stage of her career......

 

Where her performance is overshadowed by her makeup...

 

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