Weapons
Hey everyone, and welcome. Today, we will be talking about the film Weapons. Spoilers ahead, so you have been warned. Fun fact, this film was released on the anniversary of Trevor Moore's death, who was a fellow in “The Whitest Kids U Know” alumni with director Zach Cregger. This film came out in 2025 and stars Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, and Cary Christopher and was directed by Zach Cregger. So without further ado, let's get right into it.
Weapons follows the residents of Maybrook who are trying to figure out what happened to 17 kids who got up at 2:17 am and walked out of their house, never to be seen again. All 17 were in Justine Grandy’s class, and the only 2 left over are her and a kid named Alex. As some dig deeper to figure out what happened, they learn that it's actually a lot weirder than they thought.
Weapons is a comedy horror film that will keep you questioning how everything will turn out, but also shows you how grief looks different for everyone. It has similar vibes to Barbarian, Evil Dead Rise, or The Black Phone.
Zach Cregger directed Barbarian, which quickly became one of my favorite horror movies, and I tried to get all of my friends to watch it. Once I heard he was directing this movie, I was sold, but the cherry on top was the cast. When I go into movies that have some type of mystery, I try to guess what the outcome will be because I think it's fun, and if a director can really throw me off, then it makes me love the reveal even more. Zach Cregger is 2/2 with that because I have yet to guess correctly as to what was happening, which made me love the movies even more. Weapons not only have the mystery of what happened to these kids that already had me invested, but they also have these weird things happening after that that kept me on my toes.
Weapons deals with a heavy topic and shows how everyone is grieving differently. Justine has alcohol problems, and it seems like that's how she deals with all this. Archer withdraws from these relationships, distancing himself from his wife and dropping the ball with his company. I think Paul is over-functioning, which comes to a head when he snaps due to all the pressure put on him. Alex also has so much on his plate, and these events will probably have lasting effects on his mental health. With all these different ways, this film is great to show how grief looks so different and how sometimes it can be self-destructive.
Just like Barbarian, Weapons is a multi-perspective narrative that was presented so well, and Zach found the perfect place to pause certain stories and then, in the end, bring them all together. Weapons begins with the kids already missing, so you're immediately thrown in and meet characters who are important to the story, but you just don't know how yet. I love this technique because it lets you not only see things from different viewpoints but also lets you see what some characters' assumed motives were vs what their actual motives are. It was a great way to build up suspense as to what was happening by giving a little taste with each person and finally revealing what was going on.
The film is filled with great performances led by the amazing Julia Garner, who plays the teacher Justine Grandy, who is being blamed for the missing children since no one has answers. She seems to be an alcoholic who really is trying to get by, but after more unexplained events happen, she starts digging deeper into what's going on. I loved how she really wanted to see what was going on, and even when it seemed like it wasn't on her mind, it definitely was. After trying to speak to Alex’s parents and seeing them sitting weirdly on the couch, she suspected something was off and tried to get to the bottom of it on her own but in one of the creepiest scenes the mom comes out and Justine is asleep in her car and the mom gets in and cuts a piece of her hair which we later learn was because the witch wanted to use it to have someone kill her. She was a big help in unfolding this mystery, and I'm glad she helped, but sad that she had to kill someone she loved in order to do so.
Alden Ehrenreich plays a cop named Paul who thinks he has so many problems, and then James comes in and makes it worse. At first, I believed him when he told Justine he was single, but I came to find out that was a big lie. He is actively dating his boss's daughter, who wants to get pregnant, which he clearly doesn't want, but it seems like he used her for his job. He is a recovering alcoholic who breaks that when he hangs with Justine. As a cop he kind of mirrors the cops who are helping with a case but seem to have their focus split so they aren’t getting answers promptly, when Jame’s needles stab him he knocks him out which shows that he doesn’t have his emotions in check, when he sees James again he wants to reprimand him but doesn’t want anyone to see so he turns off his camera, and then when he enters the house with the witch he’s reckless which gets him caught which is a pretty good representation of a cop. Unfortunately, Justine has to kill him because he was going to kill her, and it's sad that it had to come to that. Even with all this, it was hilarious to see him get stabbed with one needle and then later get stabbed multiple times when James thought he was someone else. He later asks James if he has any diseases, which is hilarious cause he's internally freaking out, but James doesn't particularly care. Paul was a mess and needed to get his life together.
Archer is one of the parents played by Josh Brolin, who is trying to figure out where his son which is causing tension in his relationship and causing him to mess up at work. He is the most vocal about Justine being the culprit, which is sad for her but also funny to see how he was grasping for straws, like her getting a DUI two years prior or her having an inappropriate relationship at work, which he thought was with a student, but it was just with another faculty member. Archer was the perfect example of how different perspectives are good in situations like these because, due to his job, he had a map of the town, and he started at least pointing out where the kids were running to. When Andrew tries to kill Justine, he notices he's running like the kids did and realizes that she isn't to blame, which was a great way to show them becoming allies. With his map and her knowing that Alex lives in the area that he assumes the kids went to, they are able to realize that the person who had an idea of what happened wasn't actually her, but Alex. When they try to go see what's going on at Alex’s, he is attacked by James, which was hilarious because James would not stay down, and Archer goes from punching him to throwing him like a ragdoll. In the end, he finds his kid, but it seems like the kid didn't come back to normal after the ordeal.
When Archer is trying to figure out where the kids were running to, he goes to another family's house, attempting to see their camera recording. The wife initially declines, so he asks the husband, and to my surprise, it's Justin Long who starred in Zach Cregger’s debut, Barbarian. He was funny in the small time he had because he wanted to help Archer, but he also seemed a bit scared by the way Archer was acting.
I saw a picture of Benedict Wong, who played Principal Andrew, prior to the movie, and I was looking forward to the explanation behind the photo because it was wild. During his time, we get our first real intro to the witch, aka Aunt Gladys, and see how she weasels her way in and then causes so much death and destruction. It was crazy to see him kill his husband and then run through town to find Justine, and how hard it was to stop him. He might not have been the best principal, but it was still sad how he was kind of an innocent bystander who got used as a pawn so the witch's identity remained a secret.
Austin Abrams plays James, and I kept thinking Wow, he's doing a great job as this drug addict but also realized he looked so familiar, but could not put my finger on it until I finally realized that it was Austin playing him. His part was a funny look at the life of an addict and how he was really just trying to get money, and stumbled upon the kids. I love how he is the one to do it and has no clue what's going on and doesn't care as long as he gets his money for drugs. When he sees the missing kids poster, his worry isn't even the kids, it's the reward, which was funny to see him really harp on that, and then when the cop takes him to the house, he likes “I still get the reward, right?”He really helped break up the movie, so it wasn't just all the people who are on edge because of the kids, because he cared about drugs, and that was pretty much it.
Gladys Lily is played by Amy Madigan, and she was deeply unsettling as the parasitic witch. I thought it was hilarious how everyone looked at her once they saw how she was dressed and how she did her makeup. She did such a good job going from this ditz who seemed too dumb to do anything, to this evil person who was torturing people and only cared about herself. It was scary how calm she was with everything as well, and how she used others to keep her hands clean, well, minus the blood she needed for her little spells. I hated how she treated Alex and really upended everyone's lives, but I'm glad in the end she got what she deserved because she was never going to stop and showed no remorse. The performance from Amy was great and really helped show how Gladys was a force to be reckoned with.
Cary Christopher plays the lone student left in the class, Alex Lilly. It's funny how everyone wanted to place blame on the teacher, and no one dug deeper into the fact that he may know something. It's crazy how much of a role he played, but also how he really was brave for not recoiling with his aunt Gladys, who is an evil witch. She uses his parents as leverage to keep him at bay, and it's sad to see that, especially when we learn how they got the marks on the cheek. I love how they showed how he may be young, but he wasn't dumb and knew he had one chance to get rid of her, and so he turned the tables on her so he could get rid of her once and for all. Cary did a great job showing how this kid kept his emotions in check and, more importantly, didn't give up and made sure to fight to save the people of the town he was in, even though they weren't always nice to him. He gave a fantastic performance and really made you want to root for him.
Whoever decided to have the possessed people run that way deserves a round of applause. I think it truly was a great, but subtle way to show that all these kids were connected, then later show that whatever happened to the kids, happened to Andrew.
There is one scene where Archer sees an AR-15 in the sky over a house with the number 217 on it. That scene made me think about how, while this movie deals with a lot of topics, it's also kind of an allegory for school shootings. The AR-15 is the gun used in some of the worst mass shootings in America. We see the parents grieving very differently, some want someone to blame, some are trying to figure out how to live their lives and have given up on the chance that the kids are alive, and some have decided to look for themselves instead of waiting for the cops, who really aren't trying hard. There is a lot of confusion on the why, and while we, as the viewer, find out, a lot of the parents were left in the dark. Then you have the fact that everyone else moves on; they shut down the school for a month, but then people move on with their lives while the parents of the missing kids are searching for answers and trying to figure out how to live with their kids gone. I don't know if it was intended, but it just seems like a lot of similarities to mass shootings, more specifically, school shootings, or kidnappings. Movies are always influenced by life, and mass shootings, unfortunately, are a part of life in America, and I think the similarities in this movie are interesting.
There are a lot of easter eggs in this movie that may seem on the nose, so you may have just put them off or maybe just didn't think they were important, but I loved the inclusion. It's HEAVILY hinted that Archer wrote witch on Justine’s car because we see the red paint in his truck and know that he hates her. I originally thought that it was included because he hated her, but it had a double meaning because it was a witch that actually took the kids, just not her. In Justine’s dream, she sees all the kids in the classroom with their heads down except one, Alex. This foreshadows that he was the one who was who helped all the kids disappear, and also is the first time we see the witch when she is on the ceiling. We see multiple videos talking about parasites, and in the context that they are presented, it makes sense why the character may be watching something that discusses them. When we learn what the witch is doing, we can come to the conclusion that she is a parasite because not only do parasites not kill their host that they are feeding on, but they can modify their host's behavior and will attempt to move onto another host unless they are stopped, and in this case, the witch was. One of the last ones I caught was the witch, aka Gladys, talking about things she can make people do, and she mentions eating each other. It seems like she is just scaring Alex into behaving, but that moment lets Alex see how her powers work, and then in the end, he uses the kids to kill her by having the kids eat her. I thought that scene was very fitting for that crazy witch and further shows that Alex wasn't dumb.
It's so hard to pick a favorite part of this movie because I loved it so much. The acting across the board was great for different reasons. The mixture of comedy and horror felt natural and thrown in with the mystery really just had me on the edge of my seat. The scares were great, and they kept my heart rate up throughout the movie. The story itself was great; the setting was contained to this small town, and you never knew where it was going, but you knew it was something exclusive to this area. By the end of the movie, I was very satisfied, and there was just so much to love about this film.
Weapons lays out the framework, and then it slowly comes together, and you'll find out things are worse than they think. The cast is great, and the story will keep you surprised and have you on the edge of your seat, guessing a million different things while jumping at the scares.
