Written and directed by Zach Cregger, Weapons is a 2025 supernatural mystery horror film with lashings of excellent dark humour. We went into this expecting good things after its critical acclaim and, crapping hell, does it deliver!
This is a fantastic film, telling a warped story about a lone witch wreaking havoc across a sleepy American suburb. It’s berserk, funny, features excellent performances, and immediately became one of our favourite modern movies.
Go Ask Gladys, When She’s 10 Feet… Weapons
Set in modern day Maybrook of Pennsylvania, the story begins with the revelation on a normal Wednesday morning, at 2:17am, some 17 children spontaneously all flee their homes and vanish.
All are from the classroom of young teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), whose class now consists of one quiet young body called Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). He’s behaving a bit weird, so Justine begins following him to his family home to find out what’s going on.
She sees his parents sitting motionless in the home and so decides to stay put in her car for the night, hoping to find something out. Then… this scary SOB moment happens!
Weapons the plays out in segments for various different characters, each one portraying separate events that ultimately tie in to each other.
Julia’s is fairly normal. As is that of Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) a concerned parent determined to find out what’s happened to his son. These two sections are largely grounded in societal realism, but then the mental stuff starts happening.
There’s a section for the town’s mild-mannered school principal Markus (Benedict Wong of Manchester fame!). This segment is really about the alarming Aunt Gladys, Alex’s elderly relative, played fantastically by Amy Madigan.
She has a bizarre wig, weird makeup, and is oddly upbeat about everything.
Okay, SOME SPOILERS ARE AHEAD!!!
Gladys alarms everyone she meets, but her attempt at a Sweet Old Lady getup does work. Locals are fooled and she can manipulate from there.
It eventually turns out she’s terminally ill, also a witch, and she’s got some serious occult knowhow. She’s in town to try and sap the energy out of locals and extend her life, which includes turning Markus into an entranced lunatic out to kill Justine.
Each segment of Weapons provides something different. We have the drug addict James (Austin Abrams), for example, and police officer Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich of “Would that it were so simple!” fame), and each one gets more and more chaotic.
Officer Morgan has just about the worst 48 hours imaginable. All of it at the hands of Gladys. One person, surreptitiously, creating havoc.
Some film critics have questioned what the point of the film is. We’ve seen some argue it’s an allegory for US school shootings and the trauma, societal apathy, and everything else that follows. There are signs of that in there, although we’ve also seen one critic suggest it’s a film about alcoholism (erm… we don’t agree with that one).
The fantastic thing, though, is Weapons doesn’t end on a positive note. The ending is (again) darkly humourous in its absurdity, but there’s no equilibrium restored in any classic Hollywood sense.
It’s just all so wonderfully, darkly, artistically refined.
The crazed journey it takes you on has dollops of Stephen King, the Denis Villeneuve film Prisoners (2013), Pulp Fiction (1994), and even something like cult classic Ravenous (1999).
Weapons is funny, sad, disturbing… a bit of everything. All carried along by some excellent performances, but it really is Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys who steals the show. She’s a new horror icon for the ages.
The Production of Weapons
Weapons was a hit. Off its $38 million budget it made some $270 million worldwide, received critical acclaim, and was nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes.
It immediately brought the spotlight back on Amy Madigan.
The 75-year-old has been acting since the early 1980s and won an Oscar for Twice in a Lifetime (1985). And so, 40 years on, she bagged a Best Supporting Actress win for Aunt Gladys! Deservedly so. The popularity of the character has led to a prequel announcement, which Zach Cregger is working on right now.
Fun fact, she’s married to actor Ed Harris. They married on 21st November, 1983 (one year to the day before Mr. Wapojif here was born).
She was cast quite late into the process, with most of the leads already filled. Pedro Pascal was supposed to be in this, but but a schedule conflict led to Josh Brolin taking the role.
Zach Cregger had remembered her performance from Field of Dreams (1989) and picked her from a list of potential casting choices.
As for the shoot, it took place from May to July 20024 in Georgia. With loads of kids in the film (at times 170+), as it’s set at a school, child labour coordinators were brought in to help out. To help out, Amy Madigan went out of her way to make sure all the children weren’t scared of her.
Not very Aunt Gladys-like, but then that’s the joys of acting for you.
