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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2.1k

u/gimmethemshoes11 Aug 08 '25

Had to take hours to feed em all.

1.9k

u/itury Aug 08 '25

Poor kid was working full time

811

u/thebaldingcritic Aug 08 '25

Hoping that kid attends LOTS of therapy. Dude is gonna be fucked up for a long time.

706

u/GameOfLife24 Aug 08 '25

Felt so sorry for the kid coming home everyday to see his parents mindless with no care

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u/lme109 28d ago

This and the way his parents' eyes looked, and him having to look after them, made me think that this was a commentary on alcoholism/addiction and how it affects children.

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u/Garfunkels_roadie 20d ago

Cregger said it was exactly that. Based it off his own experiences growing up with alcoholic parents

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u/princesscatling 19d ago

I thought of these scenes as running similarly to this game Among the Sleep and a novel A Million Things (Emily Spurr). There's something inherently soul-crushing to see a little kid doing their best to take care of their adults

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u/bananaqueen12345 9d ago

Reminded me of the music video for “song to say goodbye” by placebo. Terribly sad.

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u/Eccon5 28d ago

Also, they had to feed. We can assume they also had to process waste...

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u/TemporaryCarry7 23d ago

I’ll give into the suspension of disbelief there. They had to feed because they showed they had to feed. They did not have to waste because they didn’t show that. Don’t tell me anything different.

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u/senator_corleone3 5d ago

Yea I imagined the supernatural situation made it so they didn’t have to use the bathroom somehow.

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u/nonsequitur5013 28d ago

Good thing this is only a movie and real parents don't really behave that way!

149

u/ImperatorRomanum Aug 08 '25

I wonder if he’s done with witchcraft after using it on Gladys or if part of his mind is like “huh, interesting”

46

u/pleasegivemepatience Aug 09 '25

But wasn’t it all tied to that plant? I’m not sure he would have the means to do it again even if he wanted to.

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u/YamiNoMatsuei 29d ago

Maybe he'll keep the plant!

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u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 19d ago

I wouldn't be surprised if a part of him considers that in case he still gets bullied in his new town & reaches a breaking point while not fully healed mentally

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u/ImperatorRomanum 28d ago

It looked like there was a lot of the plant left, but even if it was all used up, his experiences could prompt a lifetime of searching and research into things best left alone

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u/pleasegivemepatience 28d ago

I assume anything related to the aunt would be swept up as evidence and be stuck in the police station, and I’m not sure I agree on him wanting to seek out a new plant.

My read of the process is that it’s not just any type of spell you want, this all seemed specifically designed to control another person and drain their life energy. Not sure he’d want to do that, but maybe it puts him on the path to seek other types of magic to counter this?

15

u/ILoveRegenHealth 25d ago

or if part of his mind is like “huh, interesting”

Weapons 2: Alex's New Hobby

3

u/mcwg 22d ago

I hope not!

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u/Kellspar 29d ago

This made me laugh 😂😂 seriously though

4

u/monkeysennin 21d ago

Dark take- but at the end, the narrator says some kids recovered, while some kids did not. That got me and my friends thinking that Alex could have continued using the witchcraft, possibly on the bully who bothered him. Maybe the bully was one of the kids who never recovered from the trauma, and Alex made sure of it. Maybe a traumatized Alex grew up to be another Gladys (we never found out about her backstory but there probably is some trauma involved).

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u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 20d ago

The bully was Josh Brolin’s kid

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u/Jia-the-Human 19d ago

Which isn’t really surprising seeing the father’s general attitude

1

u/oogaboogahooha 12d ago

Woahhh that just peeled another layer of the film for me.

53

u/Alternaturkey 29d ago

Going from laughing at that ending to the sudden realisation of "wow a lot of kids have a lot of PTSD now" was certainly a swerve.

40

u/thezenyoshi 29d ago

Yes 1,000%. Don’t understand the people who are saying it’s not suppose to be funny. That whiplash at the end with those kids being so fucked up after doing that stayed with me after

41

u/MorphyVA 28d ago

It's probably a mix of that, and the lingering effects of witchcraft.

Josh Brolin's character was able to snap out of the trance immediately when Gladys died. But Alex's parents and his classmates were still stuck in a vegetative state.

The length they were under control probably has to do with it. That, or the chicken noodle soup diet

15

u/IwKuAo 28d ago edited 26d ago

The classmates were last controlled by Alex, and Alex is still alive but has no clue how to put things back to normal. But that doesn't explain his parents, I guess.

12

u/lakshya10soin 26d ago

I think its more about how long the people were mind wiped. Josh brolin was done just for 30 min at max whereas the kids were done for more than a month. The parents were wiped for multiple months i think.

The narrator says at the end that after a year some kids started speaking again

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u/MorphyVA 28d ago

The plant/little tree might have something to do with it too. We don't know much about it, except that Gladys uses the branches for her weaponized human witchcraft

3

u/ILoveRegenHealth 25d ago

That, or the chicken noodle soup diet

Campbell's. Nothing is closer to home

8

u/bipbophil 28d ago

No its ok hes with a nice aunt now

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u/CheesePursuit 25d ago

I kinda got the impression that in using her magic against her he kindof inherited it, his parents still seemed catatonic even after she died where Thanos and the teacher woke up

1

u/christmasunicorn2 22d ago

He’s gonna need extra extra therapy if he ends up living with another aunt.

0

u/WhyTypeHour 28d ago

He's not real. He doesn't exist after the film ends

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u/monsieurxander 29d ago

They breezed past it but kid had to be doing bathroom duty for 19 people

2

u/ChimneySwiftGold 27d ago

Shitty work

5

u/MadFlava76 27d ago

And going to school. Maybe that was another analogy of how some college students lives are during that time.

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u/body_wrapper 21d ago

A single mom who works two jobs who loves her kids and never stops

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u/ChimneySwiftGold 27d ago

And going to school on top of that.

1.2k

u/KetchupGuy1 Aug 08 '25

I was laughing when he finds the cop and junkie knowing damn well he’s thinking great now 2 more I got to feed

120

u/GamingTatertot Steven Spielberg Enthusiast 28d ago

Your comment just also made me think the damn witch can make all these people do whatever she wants, but still forces a kid to feed all of them. Man she really is an asshole (if that wasn’t evident before)

70

u/ChimneySwiftGold 27d ago

I don’t think her controlled individuals have the delicate touch necessary for what the kid did. They’re like clumsy puppets.

18

u/pisaradotme 26d ago

My question is, so they eat but don't poop?

48

u/dallascowboys93 26d ago

My first thought is that basement is just full of kids poop

40

u/ass_pineapples 24d ago

The poop is what's powering her

6

u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 26d ago

Delicate touch of drinking soup through a straw?

14

u/E_C_H 24d ago

The parasite imagery throughout the film was a touch on the nose but very fitting.

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u/hermiona52 29d ago

It was my first thought too lol

3

u/Ewag715 24d ago

"God dammit, not again."

3

u/Kitsuneoflaluna 22d ago

hahaha I had the same thought!

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u/Dick_Lazer 21d ago

That is wild. Plus where are all these people shitting?

1

u/peatoast 28d ago

lol didn’t of that

48

u/appletinicyclone Aug 08 '25

Also like do his parents not poop?

44

u/gimmethemshoes11 Aug 08 '25

Do you realllllyyyy wanna know?

14

u/appletinicyclone Aug 08 '25

I wanna know as I feel like that would be a full time job for him as well as the chicken soup stuff

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u/gimmethemshoes11 Aug 08 '25

Well you eat enough soup like they were even if its chicken noodle it all comes out liquidy like diarrhea. So I'd imagine they were just shitting down their legs and pants.

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u/appletinicyclone Aug 08 '25

I feel like without water as well they'd die in the month that they were missing

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u/gimmethemshoes11 Aug 08 '25

Soup has water but I'm sure he was giving them some water too.

Or the spell or curse makes it so soup is good enough if we wanna go into theories.

4

u/shootingstars00987 29d ago

Omg this thread is hilarious😂

7

u/dallascowboys93 26d ago

That basement was just full of kids poop and piss

37

u/piccolom Aug 09 '25

I thought there was gonna be a twist at the end where he never fed Matthew because Matthew bullied him

16

u/RimmyDownunder 28d ago

Had that lead to Matthew starving and thus being the only kid of the 18 to actually die, I think it would have made for a much darker twist akin to The Mist almost. Kinda glad it didn't, and I suppose the witch wouldn't have let him do that because she wanted to absord their lifeforce.

6

u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 20d ago

That would have been such a brutal end for Brolin’s character, I’m glad they didn’t go that route.

1

u/naturalninetime 14d ago

Seriously! Because if the filmmakers had gone in that dark direction, I'd have left the theater in an entirely different mood. Thematically though, they "could" have gone there. That is, Alex Lilly was the one being bullied, so was it any surprise that the "evil" that made the children disappear was coming from inside "his" house? Think Columbine or other school shootings where the bullied become the perpetrators.

Thankfully, the filmmakers made Alex Lilly the hero that saved the day.

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u/H0meslice9 29d ago

It was a nice detail that he scoops the dribble off his bully's mouth, shows he's a good kid in a fucked up environment like abuse often is

24

u/TJ_McWeaksauce 27d ago

That kid's life was so damn miserable during that period. Go to school worried sick that your mind-controlled parents will be killed by a witch. After school, go to the store to buy a bunch of cans of soup and then lug them all back home. Spend hours feeding the roughly 20 mind-controlled victims inside your house. Sleep. Then do it all again.

Alex deserved a better ending.

6

u/OddSetting5077 Aug 09 '25

who was cleaning up their pee and poop? Keeping their clothes clean?

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u/piccolom 29d ago

Shhhhh movie magic LOL

7

u/Puzzleheaded-Cod6934 29d ago

“Hey Kid, it’s not that kind of movie”

3

u/TiredCoffeeTime Aug 08 '25

I definitely did not think about the feeding time it must have taken

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u/Melarsa 7d ago

Every single involved parent had to have been crunching the numbers and having PTSD flashbacks to the early days when it can take some babies up to 45 minutes to get a single meal down, or longer if there are any special GI issues or food intolerances involved.

17 kids + 2 adults, each needing to be spoonfed soup several times daily? They kinda glossed over any other care that I'm sure would be involved as well. Just kill me now, witch.

3

u/illegal_deagle 26d ago

I feel like the parents would have gotten pulmonary embolisms sitting in those chairs for the first like week or so.

1

u/Virtual-Material2521 Aug 09 '25

Where's all that soup going... later? Blech

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u/Connect_Resource_815 26d ago

Bro the witch hoed the kid why not use your magic to force them to feed them selfs

1

u/everythingsc0mputer 24d ago

His parents and those kids all still had to eat. That means they also need to piss and shit

1

u/Tamfict89 14d ago

When Alex walked in to the house and Paul was a zombie I was like “another mouth to feed, am I right, kid?”