Two Scary Movies

 Weapons, (2025)

The premise is that all but one child from a classroom run-away one night.  The teacher and the one remaining student are closely questioned and both claim to have no idea about what happened.

What I liked about it was that it was pretty scary--we were in for a horror film and while it wasn't the most frightened I've ever been, it was scary.  In a deeper sense, it was an engaging story--not like the usual fare of a small and dwindling cadre of teens being chased-around and killed-off.  It's a real story and the way it's told from different perspectives is artful.  It has a great denouement and a satisfying ending.

Talk to Me (2022)

The premise is that there's this hand and you can hold it, like you're shaking hands but with your left hand.  Then you say, "Talk to me", which makes contact with a spirit, then you say, "I let you in"  which lets the spirit possess you. It has to be done as a group activity, because the contact needs to be broken by someone else, by prying the hand off of the possessed person.

The story revolves around a group of teens doing this for a thrill--which may be a sort of message on the danger of drugs.  In addition, the teens like to video the events with their phones, so maybe a commentary on being excessively on-line.

Overall, pretty scary and well acted.  The main drawback is that it was in Australian (English) but would have been just as comprehensible in German.  Maybe if you watch it, put on subtitles.  Another pesky thing was getting the aspect-ratio right.  We normally keep ours on automatic and it was really off--to the point where we restarted the film.  Then it was close and the stretch setting got it working perfectly--except for the afore-mentioned not understanding a word they said a lot of the time.