This weekend we watched two films that couldn’t be more different. One film may be looked at as a horror masterpiece in the future. The other film will be a forgotten comedy that some of us may ask “wait they starred in a movie together?”. On Friday we went to Emagine Theatre to check out Zach Cregger’s Weapons and came home from a football game on Saturday night to watch the Tim Story directed The Pickup.

Starring MCU alumni’s Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, and Benedict Wong, Weapons has a loaded cast that made it a must watch. We had some high expectations for this horror film after watching Zach Cregger’s previous film Barbarian. Glad to say that Weapons exceeded Barbarian, and we enjoyed it more. Which I absolutely loved Barbarian. Weapons does a great job at balancing humor and horror in a terrifying story of 17 students that go missing.

In a rare moment, Weapons actually had me reacting with an audible “Oh shit” in the movie theater. Cregger is a master at building suspense and a certain chase scene had me on the edge. Weapons cast is great but the two that really stuck out to me were Austin Abrams as James and Amy Madigan as Gladys. To have such a stacked cast and two supporting characters steal the movie shows how good of a script that Cregger produced. If you love a good thriller with horror and comedy elements, this is a must watch. Its gory in parts but overall the tense moments shine the bright. Also happy to see Julia Garner and Alden Ehrenreich in another film after their success in the MCU as Shalla-Bal and Ezekiel Stane.

Cregger has proven that originality is still key in filmmaking and we want more of it. Sinners, Companion and now Weapons are examples of original horror stories that are well made with passion. 2025 has proven to be a great year for horror films and I am saying that with missing out on films like Together and The Monkey. When one film soars, another sadly has to sink.

Overall score for Weapons: 9 out of 10. Sinners is still my favorite movie of the year.

Now with a cast that features the likes of Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, and Keke Palmer, I had high expectations. Unfortunately, The Pickup is a disappointing comedy that had potential to be amongst the funniest of 2025. Within the first 10 minutes of The Pickup, Nora looks over to me and says “Why am I getting Ghosted vibes?”. Which she was right, much like Ghosted, The Pickup wastes a fun cast on a lackluster story. So what went wrong?

The film felt cheap at moments, an action-comedy that tried to have exciting action scenes mixed with immature humor. This is a style that can work, look at Bullet Train, for example, that put the action first and not the comedy. I can’t tell if this was putting Eddie Murphy in the Liam Nesson role of an old badass or if it was the script that made a 90 minute film feel longer than Weapons, which was slightly over 2 hours. The misuse of Marshawn Lynch and Roman Reigns also caused moments of “why are they here?”

The film was not all bad, the three leads are good enough to keep the story going and teases moments of true comedy gold. The chemistry between Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson was there despite Eddie coming off as a shell of his former self. I would love to see them together in another film with a strong script. Keke Palmer, love her in just about everything but sadly, she didn’t bring anything special to the role of Zoe. Palmer was funny in Nope and One of Them Days, but feel like the script never gave her a moment to really shine in this.

If you are on Prime looking for a good comedy, I suggest checking out either Heads of State with John Cena and Idris Elba or Deep Cover with Orlando Bloom and Bryce Dallas Howard. For fans of Murphy trying to relive his glory days, it might be smart to watch something else, as this felt like his least comedic role in a while.

Overall Score: 4 out of 10.