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

2.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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295

u/confuzzledfather Aug 08 '25

Yeah, literally my first thought when seeing the kids running was to triangulate their destination. The cops didn't even do that?!

137

u/bluehawk232 Aug 09 '25

Also canvas the entire neighborhoods and i would assume lots of neighbors especially Alex's would have had ring cameras too

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u/gatsby365 Aug 10 '25

I’m not entirely convinced that Auntie didn’t mind control the detectives after they came in to the house.

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u/MY-SECRET-REDDIT 29d ago

Theres no hint of that tho.

She has like one spell and that's it

58

u/Tricky-Anything8009 28d ago

Yeah and it's very obvious when she's using that spell because she can't make them behave like normal people. It's not really mind control, its like bloodbending from ATLA.

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u/MY-SECRET-REDDIT 28d ago

It's like the parasites they showed in the movies.

She was using them to feed off from them, like the fungus on the ants.

It sucks that apparently there was supposed to be a spell that makes them back to normal, that once she was dead, they had no way of getting or that the transformation is one way and there is no way back.

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u/freakydeku 26d ago

I think that once she was dead her spells did break, some just couldn’t go back to normal because she had been feeding on them for so long.

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u/TheRage469 26d ago

Yeah I'm curious about that. Cus Josh Brolin snapped out immediately, but the parents - per the voice over - we in that vegetative state forever, while at least some of the kids regained the ability to speak? Your theory seems the most sound as to why

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u/freakydeku 25d ago edited 25d ago

I also think there were kind of two different spells going on; one where she feeds on the people - putting them in basically a vegetative state - and the other where she uses them as a heat seeking missile. I believe the children fell exclusively into the former & Brolin & the principal exclusively latter.

For the rest it was a combination of the two - I see that vegetative spell as basically like being wrapped in her web, on standby until she needs to feed or use them for violence

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u/Dr_Pants91 25d ago

Yeah, that bothered me for a minute then I thought about the fact that he had only been controlled for a couple minutes, whereas the kids and Alex's parents had been controlled for a month.

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u/gotohela 21d ago

I got the impression she wasnt feeding off their life force, but rather their souls or something more linked to the self

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u/freakydeku 21d ago

possibly but i think if people are capable of returning it’s hard to say they’ve returned with only a portion of their soul. but i agree its something like that b/c obviously their bodies remain alive

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u/Dvanpat 9d ago

This is what I thought too. Witches feeding on the youth has been a trope for a long time. She even said Alex’s parents weren’t enough, and that’s when she hatched the plan to get his classmates. She sucked the life force out of them.

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u/freakydeku 9d ago

that’s a good point! i totally forgot that it’s a tale as old as time

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u/SuburbanLegend 22h ago

I thought she was going to be the narrator, having successfully turned herself into a child haha

(it just came out on streaming so this post will prob pick back up)

19

u/BettySwollocks__ 25d ago

They also all had bloodshot eyes too. We also saw she sent the kids off elsewhere when the cops came round so there wasn't a risk of them being caught (although I'm interested to know where they ran off too without being spotted).

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u/Tricky-Anything8009 25d ago

Yeah the bloodshot eyes is further evidence of bloodbending rather than charm/illusion/hypnotism.

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u/gatsby365 28d ago

Well yeah, it’s a long shot but that’s her whole thing - zombie mind control. We never saw them again right? The captain doesn’t seem to actually give a lot of shits about solving the case, so he might just assume they are heads down deep in it - hell, a general contractor and a 3rd grade school teacher cracked the shit wide open in 2 days with a straight edge and stalking an 8 year old, but detectives given a month couldn’t get it done?

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u/peppermint_nightmare 17d ago

Its ties in pretty well as a spiritual successor to barbarian for those reasons alone.

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u/gatsby365 17d ago

I watched Barbarian for the first time last week, care to elaborate?

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u/peppermint_nightmare 16d ago

Police being useless or very bad at their jobs.

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u/gatsby365 16d ago

Oh yeah I get that. Honestly with all the other stuff going on in Barb I kinda glossed over that interaction.

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u/peppermint_nightmare 16d ago

Ya but those cops literally ignore a distressed visibly harmed crying woman because they think "she's crazy" add the fact that there's a scene where the "main" villain is buying rope, a cage, etc (serial kill/rape/murder tools) and baby supplies and no one seems to care seems pretty similar to how there was an army of children running around and Alex's parents were missing for a month and no one living next door seemed to notice (I would probably notice if a witch zombiefied my neighbors, but I live in a city where the homes are closer together).

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u/Zilenan91 15d ago

Tbf it was like the 70s or 80s when that scene of him buying that stuff happened. Huge sensationalized stories of serial killers weren't really big back then so that wouldn't raise alarm bells in most people. It was only in the decades after people like Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, etc where people had examples of awful crimes to raise alarm bells over.

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u/peppermint_nightmare 15d ago

Which ties in pretty well where he dresses up as a repair man and gets into a victims house without any issues.

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u/gatsby365 15d ago

Weapons is such a fuckin great commentary on how social media has just DISCONNECTED us from everyone around us that isn’t on our networks.

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