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'WEAPONS' is a Humbling Insight into the Parasitic Nature of Grief and Abuse
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'WEAPONS' is a Humbling Insight into the Parasitic Nature of Grief and Abuse
By: Katie Beachy
I was lucky enough to see Zach Cregger’s WEAPONS in the third row of a sold-out room, elbow to elbow with the most random group of people imaginable all buzzing with excitement over one of the most anticipated movies of the year… on a Wednesday.
Such is the life of the horror enthusiast in 2025, one of the best years yet for a genre that has felt largely underestimated until relatively recently. With seemingly endless box office hits, horror has finally been elevated to the pedestal it has long deserved. As I looked around the crowded room, I couldn’t help but think, do the teenage girls in front row know what they’re getting into? Is the couple next to me who brought their grandfather even ready for this? As my embarrassingly audible yelp would later fill an otherwise silent room…
I finally realized that the person I should have been most concerned for was myself.
WEAPONS follows the fallout surrounding seventeen children who have vanished on an otherwise normal Wednesday night after simultaneously fleeing their homes at 2:17AM, leaving one singular classmate behind.
The story is told in fragmented parts from the points of view of six community members: Justine, the teacher whose classroom is now down to one, the school’s principal Marcus, Archer, the father of one of the missing children, policeman Paul, local junkie James, and Alex, the student left behind. Justine (Julia Garner) is left to fend for herself and Alex (Cary Christopher), as grief-stricken members of the community turn on her as a potential suspect. Archer, played by the powerhouse Josh Brolin, who is no stranger to playing physically intimidating men, leads the witch hunt against Justine as his grip on reality grows ever weaker, going so far as to emblazon her SUV with the word ‘WITCH’ in bright red paint. Amidst a shattered community and with no assistance from an ineffectual police department, Archer and Justine resort to doing their own research to try and rescue the missing kids.
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Part of what makes WEAPONS so enjoyable to watch is how candid the characters are.
They are flawed and relatable, attempting to do what they know is right before unashamedly diving into their own grief-fueled weaknesses. Archer is dealing with untreated anger problems as he grieves a missing child he could not effectively show his love for until he was gone. Justine leans on toxic relationships better left in the past – including the vodka disguised in a fast food cup in the cup holder of her vandalized vehicle – as she attempts to turn her rapidly unwinding life around.
Cregger has mastered the art of horror in the modern age, as was already evident with his smash hit BARBARIAN in 2022, where he mixed the familiar threat of entering a stranger’s home with the modern fear of finding it already booked by another. In a world full of ring cameras and smart phones, where your daily movements are likely to be recorded by something, it’s almost more unsettling today when something does manage to go missing.
As if the thought of seventeen third graders running away in the middle of the night wasn’t terrifying enough, the manner in which they are running will send a chill up your spine. Showing no signs of fear, the children are captured on multiple cameras sprinting into the night, giggling gleefully as if playing a game.
Cregger has noted that the children running with arms outstretched and fingers extended was not a random choice – he wanted to remind viewers of Phan Thi Kim Phúc, the young girl who is the subject of the photograph ‘The Terror of War.’ The photo captures her at only nine years old, running naked and burned with her arms outstretched amongst several other children fleeing from the napalm dropped on the South Vietnamese during the Vietnam War in 1972. Thankfully, Phúc made a miraculous recovery and would go on to found the Kim Foundation, which is dedicated to helping the innocent child victims of war through building schools, hospitals, libraries, and providing financial assistance to those affected.
Through this selfless act of unfathomable bravery, she is breaking the cycle that can leave communities stuck in an insidious hellscape. The photo became a powerful message against war and the reminder that no life — not even the lives of innocent children — is safe during times of warfare. The Kim Foundation brings this sentiment to life through action and reparation.
In many instances, the children of WEAPONS are the targets of the abuse and instability caused by the adults directly tasked with protecting them.
Alex is visibly overburdened, both mentally and physically. He is being swallowed by an empty shark-patterned backpack that sags around him like a cloak, illustrating the substantial baggage he is being forced to carry around as he walks nearly invisibly to sit alone. His desk is placed in the very back, causing him to appear as part of a gigantic mural of various fish and whales, titled simply as “The Wonderful World of Whales.”
Unlike whales, no species of shark engages in any form of parental care for their young. As soon as they enter the world, the baby sharks are abandoned and expected to fend for themselves – if they are lucky enough to not have been consumed by their own parents or siblings. Sharks are infamously oophagous, or “egg eating,” where the first shark to hatch will often consume the remaining unhatched eggs, a simple turn of luck deciding which of the young should survive. Meanwhile, whales are mammals who, like humans, birth altricial young who require constant care to survive, often spending several years alongside their mothers as they navigate the vast oceans. Now left to fend for himself, the adults left in Alex’s life can barely agree on whether he is equally a victim, or somehow at fault for having been left behind.
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WEAPONS features two children branded with shark symbolism: Alex, with his overbearing shark backpack, and Archer’s son Matthew (Luke Speakman), who flees from his parents’ home wearing a camouflage sleep shirt patterned with various shades of green sharks. Matthew is shown through Alex’s perspective to have been a bully like his dad, singling in on Alex as his main victim. Clad in a uniform that bears the decoration of hunters and soldiers prepared for war — a pattern that is meant to help the world swallow him up — Matthew is forced onto an inherited battlefield. Inferred to be a result of his parents’ emotional negligence, Matthew’s loneliness has become weaponized against Alex and the vicious cycle of bullying and neglect that Archer had modeled has been passed on to infect another corner of the community. Due to circumstances completely outside of their control, Alex and Matthew have found themselves sharks in the center of a world meant for whales.
As it turns out, the source of all this unpleasantness is the sudden arrival of Alex’s great-aunt Gladys, played by the amazing Amy Madigan, whose character was so well-received she is rumored to be receiving her own movie. Gladys is a skilled witch in an unconvincing disguise who relies on consuming the life force of others to survive. With her clownish makeup and oddly anachronistic style choices, Gladys looks something like an alien life form attempting to masquerade as a regular human – or perhaps a demonic embodiment of the foulness surrounding the fictional town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania. Her appearance is quite similar to that of the clown Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT, a garish representation of a character usually meant to fill children with joy instead of fear. Their appearances hardly fool anyone easily – children nor adult – and oftentimes we see people look Gladys up and down like something is signaling a threat… perhaps her terrifying chipped red nail polish and smeared red lipstick, or her frenzied hair that looks like she sleeps upside down at night like a bat. And yet, many attempt to accommodate her and shrug away their suspicions. While they are seemingly just trying to be polite and non-judgmental towards a woman who society has decided is likely harmless, they are also turning away from her unassuming victims as soon as Gladys leaves them alone.
Gladys arrives to Alex’s family home like an evil Mary Poppins, complete with a literal Mary Poppins Weekender Carpet Bag by the brand MCW Handmade. The bright pink rose print of her bag is a genius addition by the costume department. The print is iconic to the Madonna Inn, a whimsical pink hotel made almost garishly bright on purpose in order to invoke happiness in its guests. It was designed by Alice Turney Williams, an influential Disney artist whose early drawings would create several characters to the delight of millions of children worldwide. There could not have been a more perfect look for Gladys, whose victims extend from open-minded adults willing to spend more than a single second under her control, to innocent children brought in by her curious whimsy as she continues to demand more from her hosts. When we see Alex interact with his parents before Gladys invades their lives, we are presented with a pretty normal American family; Alex’s dad makes a genuine but awkward attempt to bond with his son, and his mother warmly but confusedly requests that Alex clean up his room for the arrival of their mysterious aunt, who no one can remember where or when they last saw, let alone where she came from. As soon as she arrives, Alex’s parents become cold, unresponsive, and unable to take care of their son, who must take over parenting duties lest his family and everything around them wither away. After Gladys has had her fill of his parents, she turns to weaponizing him against his own classmates, forcing him to lead his classmates to Gladys amidst her threats of extinguishing what is left of their life force.
Cregger has noted that Alex’s story was partially inspired by his own, growing up as the child of alcoholic parents. A home is infected with a parasitic presence that sometimes feels like it came out of nowhere, and the adults you were once dependent on become zombified versions of their former selves. As his parents succumb to Gladys’ influence, Alex is forced to take over the role of parent. As the kitchen falls further into disrepair and the windows are covered with newspapers as the light that once filled the home disappears, Alex is forced to regularly visit the grocery store after school to supply his parents and seventeen children now hidden in his basement with food. Now without a parent to pick him up from school, he fills his gigantic backpack with cans of Campbell soup, having to walk home with his groceries on his back and jammed precariously in plastic bags. He appears almost reminiscent of Kevin McCallister in HOME ALONE, which, despite the overt comedic element, is another film that illustrates the extremely sinister consequences of child abandonment. WEAPONS is clearly a horror movie, with exceptional jump scares interwoven with near-silent frights and an overt sense of dread. However, had this movie been a drama about the trials of a childhood drowning under the effects of alcoholism, the horror would have been no less palpable. Many viewers have questioned why Alex was never helped or questioned by an adult for purchasing large amounts of soup. In HOME ALONE, Kevin is the same age as Alex and is also only half-heartedly interrogated for his age once, then even accused of petty theft during his next grocery visit. This scene came to my mind as Justine was chastised by the liquor store clerk and told to leave as she is clearly being attacked by a violently possessed principal Marcus. Even though the two films are thirty-five years apart, the store clerks act nearly identical when children and young women are alone and clearly in distress. Instead of lifting a hand in aid, they are much quicker to point a finger in blame. This repetitive inaction on behalf of society, coupled with the horrifying reality of humans inflicting abuse on the most vulnerable, is a real-life horror story that often hits too close to home.
The story of policeman Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) is also uncomfortably upsetting, even despite the outside chaos. Paul is struggling as a member of a corrupt yet inactive police force and can’t stop obsessing over the trivial case of James (played by the fan-favorite from Euphoria, Austin Abrams), a local unhoused junkie who, aside from his main method of income via petty theft, is largely harmless in a town reeling from the sudden unexplainable loss of nearly two dozen children. Nevertheless, Paul targets James and gives chase in his squad car after spotting him attempting a break-in. After accidentally stabbing himself through his glove with a needle recovered during a pat down, Paul finally loses his cool and attacks James, in full view of his police dash camera. Forced to leave the scene empty-handed and now a criminal himself, Paul has an anxiety attack while fixating on potential disease transfer during the needle prick. Despite this, he simply wipes the wound with an alcohol swab, wraps up his hand in an obvious display of injury and hastily reports to his boss, who happens to be his wife’s father, before going to meet his ex Justine at a bar. Declining to tell Justine about his committed relationship with the karmic Donna (June Diane Raphael) or his involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous, Paul quickly gives into his demons and indulges in his grief over his unsatisfactory life. Paul’s house of cards is crumbling, and he is the architect. WEAPONS shows us how easily the poisons of grief and addiction flow from person to person when unchecked, intent on infecting as many people as it can before consuming everything in its path.
Many of the adults in WEAPONS are so “focused” on the missing children that they forget about everyone else still present in their lives. James is so intent on scoring a few bucks to support his various drug habits that he lies to what friends he has left and steals a tiny backpack to pawn an iPad with the child-sized headphones still plugged in, completely oblivious of the horrors the town is facing. Archer is so grief-stricken he has abandoned his catatonic wife to sleep in his missing son’s bed. Marcus acts like the human version of the “hear no evil” statue displayed on the shelves behind his desk, desperately attempting to meet everyone’s various demands with comforting words and ultimately leading to no action. Justine and Paul throw away their growth and revert to alcohol to dull the pain of their failures. Every adult is, in some way, possessed and rendered ineffectual by untreated trauma.
WEAPONS steadily intensifies throughout the film before ending in all out chaos, culminating in one of the most satisfyingly cathartic final scenes in horror history as the children finally have their revenge against their captor. Cregger was considerate to end such a terrifying film with comedic relief, sending the victimized children to crash through the glass castles still standing around them – quite literally. As families sit on their phones, roasting in the direct sun as they sit oblivious to the troubled outside world, Gladys, the children, and an extremely exhausted but still determined Archer smash through luxurious glass windows and doors, ending the fantasy of a safe and nonviolent world that never actually existed. The ending invokes the unhinged chaos and hilarity from the comedy skits of The Whitest Kids U’ Know, a sketch comedy series Cregger has been widely known for before becoming an instant horror icon. Often exploring dark themes in his comedy, Cregger has always displayed an impressively balanced approach to hilarity and horror. His depictions of unsettling but real-life horrors are somehow made hilarious, oftentimes silently pointing toward the message of absurdity that they create. WEAPONS brought to mind a personal favorite sketch, “Baby Skull Seeking Bullet,” in which Trevor Moore plays a hunter and chairman of the National Hunting Board who debates Darren Trumeter, an increasingly irritated television host who questions the existence of varying overpowered weapons, including a bullet that specifically targets the skulls of babies. In an all-too-familiar instance of whataboutism, Moore insists nonsensically that there can be a need for such a ridiculous weapon. While obviously a comedic jest, comedy and horror often criticize and bring light to questionable practices society engages in every single day, often without concern.
Following the tragic and untimely death of his friend and fellow comedy troupe founder Trevor Moore, Cregger immersed himself in the writing of WEAPONS. He has spoken about how he did not want this movie to be a movie about grief – oftentimes we see grief played out far too heavily in horror, or with exploitative topics that leave the audience unsure of how to correct any societal wrongs. Instead of another carbon copy, we are given a shockingly raw and impressively clear look into the illusory terror that surrounds tangible grief. This all-consuming presence will threaten to decimate everything in its path unless someone should bravely stand up to the root of the cause. Ultimately, WEAPONSgifts us a humbling glimpse into the vicious cycles of abuse and neglect, and the often nearly insurmountable pressure it puts on our surrounding community.
As the film came to an end and lights illuminated our horrified faces, the crowd quickly dispersed, buzzing still but now with a disquieted unease in the aftermath of this stunning overflow of raw emotion on film. As I took a few breaths to quell my Gladys-induced heart palpitations, the older gentleman next to me (who had remained impressively stoic throughout the entire film as I audibly fought for my life in terror) stood up, laughed, and said: “Wow. What a film.”
My thoughts exactly. WOW. What a film.
RUN, don’t walk, to see WEAPONS; now streaming digitally.
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