More September Movie Reviews: Weapons, Strange Harvest, Relay

Get ready for a bonus roundup of three more movie reviews for September. However, unless your tastes are quite different than mine, only one of these films is likely worth your time.

Weapons (2025)

Warner Bros. Pictures, 128 minutes

Weapons is a horror film with a great setup: One day, every child in a class except one doesn’t show up to school because the night prior, at 2:17AM, they all ran off into the darkness. From here, our story picks up showing the events that follow the mass disappearance.

The movie is structured in a way where we see events from the perspective of one character for a bit, then see another chapter from a different perspective. Sometimes events from different chapters overlap, and when taken all together they provide the full, complete story. It works well, and the result is a film that’s definitely never boring.

Weapons was written and directed by Zach Cregger who auctioned the rights to the film for $38 million. It’s easy to see why it was so coveted. The film is creative, and though it’s presented in a unique style, it’s actually a fairly straightforward story and I think it’ll appeal to a wide variety of horror fans.

As far as being actually scary, I’d say there a few creepy moments, and while the movie is definitely violent at times, it’s never truly terrifying. This is more of a well-made, solidly good film, than an instant horror classic or anything like that. Weapons is definitely worth watching for anyone looking for a quality film in the horror genre. 

Grade: 8/10

Stange Harvest (2024)

Roadside Attractions, 94 minutes 

Stange Harvest is a horror film that I’m not sure has super wide-reaching appeal. It’s done in the style of those true crime documentaries that I feel like were extremely popular for a while there but have become somewhat less popular recently.

Anyways, Strange Harvest is basically like one of those documentaries, with two detectives talking about the case they’re working on interspersed with fake news footage and crime scene photos. Since this is a horror film, the case we’re focusing on centers around a gruesome serial killer and also has some supernatural elements.

These supernatural (potentially more interesting) elements aren’t as important to the film’s writer though as having as many disturbing kills as he can come up with. The violence feels sort of just thrown out there and not totally earned. It doesn’t add much to the story besides shock value.

If you’re a huge fan of true crime and horror this might be a movie you’d enjoy, otherwise I’d probably pass. It’s an alright way to spend an hour and a half, even if it’s not too memorable.

Grade: 5.5/10

Relay (2024)

Bleeker Street, 112 minutes

Relay is a thriller that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year but was released theatrically (and streaming) recently. The setup for the movie is interesting enough. We follow a fixer who helps potential whistleblowers who decide they no longer want to be whistleblowers and instead want to strike a deal with their former employers. This character acts as an intermediary between his clients and their shady companies.

The movie adopts a sort of spy movie, fast-paced thriller feel that works well for the earlier part of the runtime. There’s always going to be some suspension of disbelief with thrillers such as this one. For the first two-thirds of the movie I was alright with the level of not quite being believable (but still being entertaining) aspects of Relay.

Unfortunately, once we reach a scene that takes place at a symphony everything goes completely off the rails. From this point onward, the movie goes from being not quite realistic but still enjoyable, into downright bonkers territory. The nerdy protagonist transforms into basically James Bond. The woman who’s case he was working on also has her character turn on a dime in a way that doesn’t feel at all earned.

Relay also has its resolution rely on a major coincidence – something that pretty much insults the intelligence of moviegoers by saying, “Hey, we couldn’t come up with an ending that was clever and made sense, so this will have to do.” There might’ve been some potential Relay, but it ends up being a big disappointment.

Grade: 4/10