Sure, though I previously used the term “fantasy and magic” to characterize the story line. A plausibly realistic drama isn’t a “documentary”. Speaking for myself, all I was saying is that personally I find movies depicting plausible situations (like A Simple Plan that I reviewed recently, or Anatomy of a Fall that I talked about earlier) more gripping because I can imagine that I’m watching a real-life story unfold. The same is true even for sci-fi films like Interstellar – it’s plausible in part (at least, given some creative license) because as technical adviser, theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was determined to keep it as scientifically plausible as possible. Whereas in Weapons, you essentially have to believe in a witch casting spells.
A lot of this is explained by Cregger’s writing methodology. Cregger wrote the mystery and the resulting fall out before he knew what the solution was. He had already written as far as the cop/James story before he even thought up Aunt Gladys.
I just watched it. Had I heard it was going to be zombies, I probably would have skipped it. But, as you said, it’s not like they’re undead style zombies so that does make it better, imo.
Aunt Gladys-holy shit! Well done, Amy Madigan. The scene that really freaks me out is the whole sequence with Marcus. I’m quite sure I’ve never seen one man caving in another’s face with his head. The way he was running, like an unstoppable force, was very disturbing, and of course the way he was splattered all over the street is one of the most gruesome things I’ve personally seen in a movie (that I can recall at the moment)
I just noticed this dropped on HBO Max. I’m not big on rewatches, but I’m tempted.
Aunt Gladys did a good job of making her character loathsome, so that was good acting.
As others have said, I’m glad I went in blind.
On rewatch I noticed all the subtle changes to scenes when viewed from different POVs and I love this movie even more.
I rewatched as well. With 2 months left in 2025, it will be hard to replace this as the best movie of the year.