Four new releases this week, it must be getting closer to Halloween!

We’ll start off with the much-discussed “Weapons” and then watch some even-newer releases: “Coyotes,” “The Drowned,” and “In Vitro,” which were all fun. Lastly, we’ll continue our ongoing kaiju coverage with 1984’s “The Return of Godzilla.”

A bunch of winners this week!

* The latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #48, is on sale now! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 Weapons

* Directed by: Zach Cregger

* Written by: Zach Cregger

* Stars: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 8 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We start right out setting the mystery of how a classroom full of kids all ran out of their houses at 2:17 in the morning one night and disappeared. Except for one kid. Then the movie is spent going over the aftermath from different points of view of the people involved, and we get to solve the mystery together. It’s long but we were never bored. Okay, Kevin was a little impatient for the first half hour or so. But overall we liked it a lot and would recommend it. And we also recommend you go into it as blind as you can.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that this is a true story, but there was a coverup to hide the truth. We open on a third-grade and a new teacher, Justine. Not one of her kids has come to school, but all the other classes are perfectly normal. Wait, a boy named Alex did show up. Every other kid woke up the previous night at 2:17 a.m., walked outside, and vanished at a run into the night. They never came back. We watch a flashback as the kids go running outside late at night. Credits roll.

Justine

The police interrogate little Alex and Justine, who know nothing. Eventually, they had to reopen the school after a month. First, they have a big meeting to deal with grief counseling over the seventeen missing children. They want to hear from Justine, who seems to be at the center of all this. What did she do? The crowd gets nasty, and the meeting is soon over. They blame her.

On the way home, Justine starts getting death threats on her phone. She finds her car painted with “Witch” on the side in the morning. The school principal, Mr. Marcus, tells her that she can’t work there anymore. She wants to talk to Alex, but she’s not allowed.

Justine meets policeman Paul at a bar later, and she tells him her problems. He says that she’s always been a little paranoid, and now she’s drinking too much. He is reluctant to drink, but we flash forward to the next morning with him waking up hung over in Justine’s bed. She drives him to his car, still at the bar.

Justine goes to see Alex, which she has been forbidden to do. There are newspapers over all the windows at his house. She peeks in and sees something weird. She’s later attacked by Donna, Paul’s wife, who is justifiably angry. At home that night, she starts seeing things.

She “stakes out” Alex’s house, gets drunk, and passes out. Someone sneaks into the car and snips off some of her hair.

Archer

We cut to Archer, who watches doorbell security video of his son running off into the darkness that night last month. He goes to work, and he’s been messing up lately. He’s been pestering the chief of police to the point of being annoying. He still thinks Justine is behind all this, but the chief doesn’t believe she’s involved. We see that he’s got red paint in the back of his truck, the same color as “WITCH” painted on the side of Justine’s car.

Archer has a dream where he sees Matthew, his son, running off to a house with a giant gun flying overhead. He goes inside and talks to his sleeping son. The light comes on, and the dream gets weird.

In the morning, Archer takes the information from his dream and checks out a nearby radio tower. He gets with some other parents and looks at their video footage. He confronts Justine, but in the middle of their conversation, she’s attacked by Mr. Marcus, the principal, who has gone utterly berserk.

Paul

We cut back a few days, as Paul sees someone suspicious running down the street, this results in a chase. He catches James, whom he knocks out. He realizes the camera is on and lets the guy go so there’s no report. The chief is somewhat supportive, so long as James stays quiet.

This is when he gets a text from Justine and meets her at the bar. He falls right off the wagon. He goes home hung over and runs into Donna, who later attacks Justine in a jealous rage. He later sees James again and chases him.

James

James is an addict who can’t get his pipe to light because he’s run dry. He breaks into a car and steals an iPad. The pawnbroker doesn’t want it. He’s trying to break into a store when Paul spots and beats him the first time.

James walks through the rain to Alex’s house and gets in through an upstairs window. He goes all through the house, looking for things to steal until he finds Alex’s parents, who seem to be frozen or paralyzed. He looks in the basement and sees all the missing children standing around down there. He gets creeped out and runs away when both parents suddenly get up. There is a big reward for the missing kids, that he plans to cash in on.

He walks to the police station to tell them when he’s chased by Paul a second time. He runs into the woods, where he sees a crazy looking clown. He ends up stabbing Paul in the face with needles. He ends up taking Paul to the suspect house.

Paul goes into the house, without calling it in or for any kind of backup, and leaves James in the back of the squad car. He never comes back out until late at night when he drags James inside.

Marcus

Marcus is sick of Justine, but he has to deal with her anyway. He gets a visit from Gladys, a very strange-looking woman. Maybe that wasn’t a clown that James saw in the woods. She says she’s Alex’s aunt, and she’s really weird. He wants to talk to Alex’s parents, not his aunt, so Marcus offers to visit them at home. He wants to avoid involving CPS, and that seems to concern Gladys.

Saturday, Marcus gets a knock on the door, and it’s crazy Gladys, wanting a drink of water - she’s so thirsty. She missed her bus, and pleads for help. He tries to say no, but his husband Terry invites her in. She comes inside for a bowl of water. She cuts herself and then takes some of Terry’s hair. She rings a bell, and suddenly, Marcus freezes and drops the phone he was about to call 911 with. She wraps Terry’s hair around a stick, covers it in blood, and snaps it. Marcus goes berserk and kills Terry. Once that’s over, she does the same thing with Justine’s bit of hair, and he runs off to attack her at the gas station.

As all the stories converge, Archer pulls Marcus off of Justine, This leads to a car chase, and Marcus gets hit by a car, badly. After things settle down a bit, Justine and Archer talk about it. Marcus was doing the “Naruto Run,” exactly the same way all the children ran. He was weaponized, like a heat-seeking missile going for a target. Archer shows her the map he’s made, and she points to Alex’s house.

Alex

Alex is at school, and he’s not happy, being bullied by bigger kids. His father says Aunt Gladys is coming for a visit; she’s sick and doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Late that night, the strange woman with the orange wig comes to stay with them. Alex isn’t happy about the sick old woman, but nobody asked him.

One day Alex doesn’t get picked up from school, and when he does get home, he finds his parents are frozen at the dinner table. Aunt Glady, however, is looking much more lively.

The next morning, the parents haven’t moved. The old lady swears him to secrecy. She makes his parents stab themselves in the face with forks repeatedly until he agrees. She said she can make them do anything, and demands that he tell no one about her. For several days, Alex feeds his parents soup from a can and quietly goes to school without saying anything.

One night, Alex sees that Gladys is very sick and has been for a very long time. Alex’s parents aren’t helping as much as she expected. She tells him to bring her an object from each of his classmates, and she might get better and leave. During the next school day, he pilfers something from each of them.

That night, Gladys does a mega-spell on all the children, who come running to her, all at once at 2:17 am. The next morning, only Alex shows up to school. Gladys is now looking very lively and colorful. She sends all the children away temporarily and cleans up the house for when the police come to inspect the place.

A month later in the story, Archer and Justine come to the house and see Paul’s police car parked in front. They don’t know what to do, but he steps out and waves them inside. They do go in. Justine steps over a line of salt on the floor, and both Paul and James spring to life and attack them. These guys do not give up easily. Upstairs, the same thing happens with Alex and his parents.

Archer finds the missing children in the basement, but he finds Gladys there as well. Gladys uses him to grab Justine. Upstairs, Alex uses one of Gladys’s hairs and repeats the spell himself, making her a target. All the children break out of the house and chase her. After an extended and hysterical chase, the children tear her apart.

Back at the house, Archer releases Justine and goes looking for Matthew again; he soon finds him. Justine goes upstairs for Ale