Weapons is the latest horror movie to generate a huge word-of-mouth following, with director Zach Cregger’s new film leaving many viewers baffled by what they have seen.
The film, starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Benedict Wong and Alden Ehrenreich, focuses on a mystery that is printed on its promotional poster.
It says: “Last night, at 2:17 am, every child from Mrs Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark… and they never came back.”
On social media, people who have seen the movie have called the ending “diabolical”, claiming that it will stick in their memories for a “long long time”.
If you’ve seen the film and are confused as to what happened or just intrigued to see what all the hype is about, we’ve broken down the plot for you below.
Warning: The rest of this article contains major spoilers for Weapons!
The film wastes no time and starts by immersing viewers in the mystery of the missing 17 children, which has left the exasperated parents of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seeking answers. Strangely, only one boy from the class, Alex (Cary Christopher), didn’t go missing during the incident.
Weapons then follows four individuals linked to the disappearance: Troubled teacher Justine Gandy (Garner), worried parent Archer ( Brolin), school principal Marcus (Wong) and Alex’s creepy and sick aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan).
It is revealed that Gladys is a witch who has used her dark magic to render Alex’s parents mute and motionless in their own home and appears to be harnessing their energy to make herself healthy again. She has also concocted a new spell which brainwashes people into murdering others, essentially turning them into weapons.
A weaponised Marcus then attempts to kill Justine while she is being confronted by an irate Archer. Trying to protect Justine, Archer manages to fend off Marcus, who is then hit by a car and killed while running after his target. Justine and Archer then agree to work together and figure out that the children’s last known locations all point to Alex’s house.
The duo then manage to overcome her ex-boyfriend Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) and his friend James (Austin Abrams) and then head towards the basement, where they find the missing children. However, in doing so, Archer becomes brainwashed by Gladys, who orders him to kill Justine.
With the situation looking bleak, Alex, who has been studying Gladys, manages to escape from his brainwashed parents and casts a new spell, which orders the children to kill his aunt. The 17 children then chase Gladys out of the house and savagely tear her to shreds. With Gladys dead, the spell is seemingly lifted from those who had been brainwashed.
The film ends with a narration from Alex, which takes place two years after the events of the movie. He explains that all of the children were returned to their homes and some have just started to talk again. Alex’s parents were institutionalised due to their trauma but never recovered. Ominously, he reveals that he has been sent to live with a “nice” aunt instead.
Speaking about the film’s ending and the overall message of the film, Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter that it was inspired by his experiences of living with his father’s alcohol addiction.
“Living in a house with an alcoholic parent, the inversion of the family dynamic that happens,” he said. “The idea that this foreign entity comes into your home, and it changes your parent, and you have to deal with this new behavioural pattern that you don’t understand and don’t have the equipment to deal with.”
Cregger did concede that he doesn’t mind if the metaphor doesn’t come through and just hopes “people have fun”.
In a four-star review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey writes of the ending: “Yet, its climactic image is a pointed, and unexpectedly funny, act of intergenerational warfare that reveals Weapons’s true message: no one’s ever really thinking about the children.”
