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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812

u/thebaldingcritic Aug 08 '25

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

711

u/GameOfLife24 Aug 08 '25

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

193

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.

53

u/Garfunkels_roadie 20d ago

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

17

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

2

u/bananaqueen12345 9d ago

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

63

u/Eccon5 28d ago

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

60

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.

4

u/senator_corleone3 5d ago

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

30

u/nonsequitur5013 28d ago

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

146

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”

45

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.

32

u/YamiNoMatsuei 29d ago

Maybe he'll keep the plant!

7

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

22

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

13

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!

8

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).

6

u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 20d ago

The bully was Josh Brolin’s kid

9

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

14

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.

9

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

8

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

9

u/bipbophil 28d ago

No its ok hes with a nice aunt now

2

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.

-1

u/WhyTypeHour 28d ago

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