[Ed. Note: The following post is pretty much nothing but spoilers for the 2025 horror film Weapons. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want it ruined, maybe go back and read about the time Storm Faerywolf menaced me with a dead opossum.]
Last evening, I sat through Weapons, which written, directed, and produced by Zach Cregger, and I am left with two pervasive takeaways:
- That was one hell of an ending.
- I can no longer feign interest in social commentary from heterosexual white dudes.
The gist of the movie is that two years ago, all but one child from the same third-grade class Naruto-ran out of their houses and disappeared into the night. A month later, the children’s teacher, Justine Gandy (played by Julia Garner), and the father of one of the missing kids (Josh Brolin) become reluctant allies and launch an investigation, discovering that an evil witch is behind the whole thing. Some bonkers shit proceeds to go down, climaxing in the witch being chased through a suburban neighborhood by the children she’d imprisoned, who ultimately drag her to the ground and tear her into all-natural dog treats. Fin.
The story is told in nonlinear fashion, so along the way, we are introduced to several other key characters: Paul, a police officer and Justine’s ex-boyfriend; James, a homeless teenager who runs afoul of Paul; Marcus (Benedict Wong), the principal of Justine’s school, who is married to a man named Terry; Adam, the remaining kid from Justine’s class; and Gladys, the witch, who is also Adam’s great-aunt. It’s here that I’d normally take a deep dive into Gladys’ subversion of the Clown Witch archetype [see Heather Greene’s Lights, Camera, Witchcraft: A Critical History of Witches in American Film and Television or my own upcoming book The Chaos Apple: Magic and Discordianism for the Postmodern Witch for more info on Clown Witches], but instead, I want to focus on Marcus and Terry, since it’s through their vignette that Cregger’s prejudices unfurl.
We meet Terry as he and Marcus are shopping for groceries, and his gender-neutral name is pointed, since he is demonstrably the more flamboyant of the two, playfully cajoling Marcus to choose between boxes of Fruity Pebbles. (Get it?! Ha!) Back at home, the couple sits down to a lunch of hot dogs and carrots (Get it?! Ha!), dressed in complimentary Disney T-shirts: Marcus is Mickey, and Terry is Minnie. (Get it?! Ha!). Once Cregger has given his audience enough of a chance to giggle at the poofters, Gladys appears at their door, manipulating her way inside and using her magic to take over Marcus and force him to brutally and graphically murder Terry. The camera is unflinching as we watch the masculine eradicate the effeminate.
Gladys then compels Marcus to track down and kill Justine, although his hunt is cut short when he is hit by a car. Once again, the camera lingers lasciviously on Marcus’ bloody remains — masc-presenting though he may have been, he was still a gay person of color, and as the token minority, he was fated to be killed off first.
The overarching theme of Weapons is parasitism, and the motif pops up repeatedly: Marcus and Terry are watching a documentary on the zombie-ant fungus; Justine is teaching her class about tapeworms; Paul has a pathological fear of blood-borne pathogens; and Gladys, of course, feeds off the energy of her victims. But on top of that, Gladys is a sick, old woman who comes to live with Adam and his parents because she has nowhere else to go, which puts an emotional strain on the family. Paul is an alcoholic. James is a drug addict. Marcus and Terry live what moderates like to call an “alternative lifestyle,” and Marcus himself is Asian.
As these are the only characters who die, through Cregger’s lens, we are to understand that they are the real parasites. And they must be punished for existing.
Oh, wait. Sorry. I’m a queer witch in recovery. I meant we. We must be punished for existing.
And okay, fine, with all that aside, did Cregger truly mean for Weapons to come across as a not-very-veiled threat towards marginalized groups? Honestly, probably not. My guess is that he just wanted to make an entertaining movie and didn’t stop to consider how any subconscious biases on his part might worm their way into the script. And since he’s the writer, director, and producer, I doubt it occurred to him to solicit any outside perspectives on how his work might affect the well-being of his consumers.
I can try to muster up some charitability and suggest that Weapons is meant to be a reflection of current times, and I can certainly feel empathy regarding the tragedy that inspired Cregger to write the screenplay. But, you know… he could also just be a bigoted jerk who doesn’t care about consequence. Hard to say. Although considering the resoundingly positive critical responses raining down upon Weapons, it seems like a whole lot of people in positions of power don’t care too much, either.
Cregger’s next big project is a 2026 reboot of the Resident Evil franchise, which, he claims, will be geared towards fans of the video games versus the movies (none of which he’s ever seen). Considering the rampant hate speech and harassment that been so documented within the online gaming community, I suspect that Cregger will finally find his people.
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