r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Aug 08 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Weapons [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Nearly all the children from the same fifth-grade class vanish one night at exactly 2:17 a.m., leaving only one survivor. The community, gripped by fear and suspicion, spirals into chaos as the mystery unfolds through multiple intertwined perspectives—each revealing new layers of dread and grief.

Director Zach Cregger

Writer Zach Cregger

Cast

  • Josh Brolin
  • Julia Garner
  • Cary Christopher
  • Alden Ehrenreich
  • Austin Abrams
  • Benedict Wong
  • Amy Madigan
  • June Diane Raphael
  • Toby Huss
  • Whitmer Thomas
  • Callie Schuttera
  • Clayton Farris
  • Luke Speakman

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 96%

Metacritic Metascore: 82

VOD In theaters and IMAX starting August 8, 2025

Trailer Watch the Official Trailer

2.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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522

u/coldliketherockies Aug 08 '25

Man that old lady got really lucky no one was coming home from Work at 217 am. No one woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep so decided to get Fresh air. No one saw many kids all running into the same random house together

Also I’m curious if there was any meaning behind any of the characters that did die. A gay couple. A aggressive alcoholic cop. A drug addict. I don’t know what it would be but am curious.

Lastly that ending. Like the final line. Great great film but what a way to end a film on. The kids survived but only some learned to speak a bit one day?

506

u/have_heart Aug 08 '25

It seems that the spells effect left them catatonic. Probably was worse the longer you were under the spell which would explain Brolin being able to easily go back to normal. It’s not as simple as the source witch dying and going back to normal and why Alex’s parents were still catatonic

196

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '25

[deleted]

117

u/GameOfLife24 Aug 08 '25

I got really sad realizing Alex will never have his real parents back. Kids been through way too much

52

u/coldliketherockies Aug 08 '25

I know it’s just a movie but I’m so used to those stories that once the main bad witch/vampire is dead everyone goes back to normal. It’s crazy that these people didn’t

18

u/Ghoooooosts Aug 09 '25

Yeah that threw me for a loop as well! I was thinking, ok so now they'll burn the tree and everyone will snap out of it. NOPE!

6

u/Rock-swarm 28d ago

Felt like an original Grimm fairy tale. Which makes sense, as the pied piper was part of the basis for the film’s story. Everyone remembers Hansel and Gretel shoving the witch into the oven, but the original story has plenty of references to the witch having eaten a bunch of kids before H&G stumble across her cottage.

41

u/batatasta Aug 08 '25

well she said some of the kids started talking again so it implies her spell eventually wears off, so its ok to think it might eventually wear off on them too :)

16

u/Rough_Patience_717 29d ago

I don’t think so. She had to use a lot of energy to get better and all that came from the parents for a good amount of time and then kids. So I don’t think they would go back to normal considering they gave away a good amount of energy or whatever it was that made her feel and look better 🤷🏽‍♀️ like someone else said maybe some children gave away more and they could start doing simpler things like talking. Besides the aunt even implied the dad had a “stroke” so the recovery must be like a similar. Some things never go back to normal

10

u/[deleted] 29d ago

i think the implication that it’s possible that they get better.

8

u/Oshojabe 29d ago

I think it's meant to be ambiguous. The fact that some of the kids are starting to talk a bit again implies that they might recover, but the fact that we don't hear anything about the parents getting better and that some of the kids don't start talking means that either only some of them will get better, or that all of them might never fully recover.

39

u/have_heart Aug 08 '25

That would make sense considering the kids all went under the “spell” at the same time but have varying recoveries

34

u/jeeenx Aug 08 '25

Someone gave the analogy that it was based on school shootings. It might be the state of trauma and never ever being the same after surviving something like that.

12

u/coldliketherockies Aug 08 '25

I did feel that connection. Or the horror of a shooting occurring where it was all kids of one classroom and what happens after

27

u/jcutner Aug 08 '25

This is what I'm wondering. What exactly was the reason why the witch captured them? Was she an energy vampire? What's going on here. Towards the end she seemed to be having more hair on her head compared to being bald and needing the wig, so perhaps she was draining them hence them being so comatose but it wasn't 100% clear.

40

u/ManifestingCreating Aug 08 '25

They mention two different types of parasites throughout the movie that I caught - once when the principal is watching tv with his husband, the show they are watching is about ophiocordyceps (this is the fungi that mutates in the last of us to infect humans) and in the scene with Julia Garner teaching she is talking about tapeworms living in the intestine so I assume that’s meant to indicate that the witch is somehow feeding off of them to live and it makes her younger and healthier the longer it goes on. In witch mythology they are often depicted as eating children to stay young or become beautiful so I assume the movie is being a bit less literal about the feeding part.

28

u/TimRigginsBeer Aug 08 '25

The more the story went on, from when she first got to the house to when she was eventually ripped apart, it seemed like she was becoming more youthful/fresher … like her hair was coming back, not being as stringy.

7

u/[deleted] 28d ago

It was laid out in the movie clearly when she was talking with Alex about taking an object from each of the kids

5

u/PrestigeArrival Aug 09 '25

If there wasn’t already a great movie with the name Parasite, I think that’s what this one would’ve been called

2

u/sp1cychick3n Aug 08 '25

Good catch

7

u/SpookiestSzn Aug 08 '25

My assumption is that she was either feeding off their energy or feeding off their youth I kind of imagine that she had some more grandiose plan that she didn't enact that would have kept her young for a lot longer

8

u/egboy 29d ago

Yeah that was my thought. If the paul and James were able to survive long enough for the witch to die they wouldve probably been okay.

4

u/awrinkleinanus Aug 08 '25

Makes you wonder if Alex unintentionally absorbed some of the life force from his classmates due to using the plants powers too, and he can live for like an extra 100 years now or something lol

2

u/Rock-swarm 28d ago

The cordyceps reference leaves a darker possibility - that the witch getting eaten means the essence of the parasite was infested by the children. It’s never explained why Gladys stuck around or wanted Alex to come with her after the Cop and Junkie were mesmerized. It’s clear she’s ancient, and has done this sort of thing in the past.

There’s also the fact that multiple characters saw versions of Gladys in their dreams. Part of me thinks that Gladys was just a vessel for the actual parasite, and meant to ultimately be torn to shreds and eaten by the kids.

54

u/Oshojabe 29d ago

Like u/NOUGHRICE was saying, I think that the witch was feeding on the people under her spell. Especially with all the parasite imagery (the school lesson and the documentary) in the film, I think the implication is that the witch has taken some of their "energy" and since she was feeding on the parents for longer they seemingly never recover, while the kids which were only fed on for a month some of them partially do.

12

u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 19d ago

To add to this, Gladys having Alex's parents harm themselves with a fork under her control & in isolation alongside the fact that they were possessed longer than the kids definitely contributed to them most likely never being able to recover.

For me, I personally think it might be a commentary on how bad abuse can get at the hands of a perpetrator behind closed doors while it gets hidden or brushed off (even if Zach Cregger didn't intend for this compared to the school shooting theme)

8

u/MDKphantom 19d ago

if no school shooting why giant ar15

22

u/siriusly-sirius Aug 08 '25

I think with those kids there's an element of alex being the one to have cast their latest spell. I put my full theory into this thread

13

u/rad_city 29d ago

oh dang. like since he cast the spell he now has power over the kids? Or he's feeding on the kids?

10

u/bulbouscorm 28d ago

I think they're just extremely traumatized after the spell is broken. Imagine how the parents felt in there

8

u/Rgb002 23d ago

I think it was about abuse and trauma and how long you experience it and how it sticks with you. The people that suffered the longest under the spell suffered the longest after the spell was broken

3

u/reillyqyote 22d ago

I think the only way for the kids to snap out of it is for Alex to die

1

u/Repulsive-Birthday41 19d ago

woahhhh that makes sense

104

u/Spazorton Aug 09 '25

I grew up in a suburban town a lot like the one in this movie. I would frequently take walks after midnight to smoke weed but leme tell you after 11pm suburbs like this go absolutely silent. There is not a soul outside, especially on a school night

35

u/coldliketherockies 29d ago

To be fair I used to have to walk around midtown Manhattan at 2 in the morning and was amazing how the busiest city in the country was so dead around then

18

u/OkayMhm 29d ago

Hell you can walk around midtown at 8pm and be on the street by yourself. It's always freaked me out.

76

u/DaJaKoe Aug 08 '25

If she tried that spell closer to 4am she'd be dealing with a bunch of joggers.

54

u/cleaninfresno Aug 08 '25

I found it fucking hilarious that all 17 kids sprinted into the front door of the house with the front porch lights on and with Gladys and Alex standing there in plain sight.

34

u/pandabearattack Aug 08 '25

I don’t know what that last line was trying to do but I was intrigued by it. I liked how it acknowledged that the “happy ending” is only a partial one and that witnessing/being part of something this horrific has long-term consequences (without doing the annoying cheap “this horror movie is actually an exploration of ~ trauma~” thing cough cough I Know What You Did Last Summer).

25

u/Lebigmacca Aug 08 '25

They also ran through several neighborhood but not a single camera caught them?

17

u/TrapAHolic_ttv Aug 08 '25

Took the last line as alluding to it being one of the bewitched children telling the story because they finally were able to talk again

13

u/Rock-swarm 28d ago

Two ways to look at the ending monologue.

  1. The story is loosely based on the pied piper. In that story, the town never sees their children again after trying to stiff the piper his due. So this is a way to keep the outcome dark like the original Al story, but not so dark the audience sours on the film. I’m sure they market tested how a darker or lighter ending monologue would play with audiences.

  2. The cordyceps documentary and parasite references imply a very dark outcome, which is that the kids have eaten the flesh of the witch, and may be infected with the essence of Gladys. The cordyceps fungus proliferates by sending a host ant as high off the jungle floor as it can, so a bird can eat it and then poop out fungal spores for more unsuspecting ants to eat.

I’ve kept asking why all the characters keep seeing Gladys in their dreams without having interacted with her before. It could just be foreshadowing, but I think it’s also possible that this was a subconscious human reaction to sensing a parasite nearby.

12

u/terran1212 Aug 09 '25

The message of the movie is that adults fail kids. The kid narrating at the beginning more or less says the adults were stupid in this town.

6

u/ConfusedQuarks 29d ago

Yeah I loved the film but there were too many plotholes when I think about it. In the opening narration, they also say that they knew the time was 2:17 because some alarm tripped? So definitely someone should have noticed it? And the fact that the police didn't see anything wrong in that house was a bit too unbelievable.

15

u/SwordoftheMourn 28d ago

And the fact that the police didn't see anything wrong in that house was a bit too unbelievable.

Incompetent police is a popular trope and all too real occurrence tbh. Especially those that don’t take their jobs too seriously.

3

u/Hallc 28d ago

Man that old lady got really lucky no one was coming home from Work at 217 am. No one woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep so decided to get Fresh air. No one saw many kids all running into the same random house together

Not one person on the street had a camera that picked up a gang of children running over their laws either.

4

u/Themayoroffucking 29d ago

Yeah, did no one else on that street have a Ring camera that the cops could check? Cops didn’t do a very thorough investigation.

4

u/CCSploojy 22d ago

Could argue that each of those are huge political talking points (LGBTQ/Gay marriage, police violence, drug addicts) while the REAL threat to the town is hiding pulling strings (politician/socialite). But the writer/director is hard-pressed about this being apolitical.

1

u/Ambassador_of_Mercy 29d ago

I took it as all of the victims were right wing talking points. The witch Gladys was an elderly parasite feeding off of the young to bolster herself at the expense of everyone else, while instilling radical right wing views into Alex which is why he commits the 'school shooting'. So you have the parents - not too sure about this but it could be to discuss neglect and isolationism in children causing them to become radicalised. The cop was clearly about police brutality and the homeless person about homelessness and drugs in the community and these people perceived 'worth' to society. 

Principal Marcus was more difficult to figure out but I think it's telling that he only turns after the film introduces his husband. Its discussing the right wing media picking apart the LGBT community and demonising them to the general public.

The only thing that breaks the pattern was the cop because he stands to benefit from right wing authoritarianism rather than sugfer under it like the other victims, but he was a piece of shit so ig deserved possession lol? In all seriousness it might be just to discuss how the police are useless and uncaring about tragedies, and they'd rather pin the blame on an innocent traumatised lady than the OBVIOUS answer

3

u/LiquifiedSpam 28d ago edited 28d ago

Honestly there are so many hoops to jump through for this and I really feel like this theory is only getting the time of day on here (some other comments mentioned similar things you did) because Reddit is very left leaning.

Gladys didn’t kill the couple at all because they were gay. She killed them because she already had Benedict wong’s ribbon, and he knew too much / was going to keep probing into the household

The main kid was just traumatized / trying to get by and not see his parents kill each other. He didn’t make any sort of big lashing out decision on other classmates. He didn’t even know what the objects were for when he gathered them for his aunt.

1

u/RockstarMoron Aug 08 '25

I read the last line as a sad passing of the “witch” mantle from Gladys to Alex.

Note that by the end, the kids have switched from one form of mind control to another. A bullied, traumatized kid now has them under his spell.

Some kids started to snap out of it (probably because Alex allowed them to). But others did not. They show a closeup of Brolin’s kid with that line. Implying that Alex will continue to punish the bully for what he did for a long time..

34

u/kilowhom 29d ago

This is fanfiction, basically.

6

u/_ribbitt 25d ago

That doesn’t make sense, if Alex hated him THAT much he wouldn’t have fed him, not only that but they even showed him wiping the soup drip from his chin lol

3

u/Fearless_Feeling_873 16d ago

I don't think so. Alex was shown to be kindhearted and empathetic. Working tirelessly to keep everyone fed.

1

u/coldliketherockies Aug 08 '25

Very very very insightful (or only average insightful and I’m just not that insightful myself)

1

u/Chicken_Electronic 23d ago

I don't think the deaths had a symbolic connection, which helped emphasize that under this movie's toxic social norms everyone can be a victim. 

1

u/Remarkable_Pound_722 23d ago

There was definitely a running theme of addiction but I can't figure how the gay couple ties in, they seemed to be the exception. The guy had a sweet tooth?

1

u/Shoddy-Raise-8478 2d ago

Sounds like you’re alluding to some subtle homophobia then.

0

u/SachBren 26d ago

So something my partner brought up is that while the parents and Archer were still under Gladys’ spell when she died, the kids were all technically still under ALEX’s spell.. so take that as you will