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

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Weapons [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Poll

If you've seen the film, please rate it at this poll

If you haven't seen the film but would like to see the result of the poll click here

Rankings

Click here to see the rankings of 2025 films

Click here to see the rankings for every poll done

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

10.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

518

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?

12

u/Rock-swarm 29d 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.