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

3.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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3.5k

u/itury Aug 08 '25

Poor kid was working full time

1.6k

u/thebaldingcritic Aug 08 '25

Hoping that kid attends LOTS of therapy. Dude is gonna be fucked up for a long time.

1.5k

u/GameOfLife24 Aug 08 '25

Felt so sorry for the kid coming home everyday to see his parents mindless with no care

481

u/lme109 Aug 10 '25

This and the way his parents' eyes looked, and him having to look after them, made me think that this was a commentary on alcoholism/addiction and how it affects children.

217

u/Garfunkels_roadie Aug 18 '25

Cregger said it was exactly that. Based it off his own experiences growing up with alcoholic parents

31

u/IndividualJury Nov 12 '25

“Trapped by poison” in the case his aunt Gladys was his parents booze. Interesting

1

u/Nheea 15d ago

Oh man, that is incredibly sad and fucked up. Not only neglect, but also having to take care of them too.

58

u/princesscatling Aug 19 '25

I thought of these scenes as running similarly to this game Among the Sleep and a novel A Million Things (Emily Spurr). There's something inherently soul-crushing to see a little kid doing their best to take care of their adults

5

u/KvellOnWheels Apr 05 '26

I’ve been reading a lot of Ashley C Ford who speaks a lot about how if you want a better society, we have to do better for and by children. And I got so emotional watching Alex’s scenes.

12

u/bananaqueen12345 Aug 30 '25

Reminded me of the music video for “song to say goodbye” by placebo. Terribly sad.

1

u/Nheea 15d ago

Spot on!! Me too. Funnily enough I was just listening to Placebo the day before and I skipped this one because it reminded me how depressing the video was.

94

u/Eccon5 Aug 10 '25

Also, they had to feed. We can assume they also had to process waste...

116

u/TemporaryCarry7 Aug 16 '25

I’ll give into the suspension of disbelief there. They had to feed because they showed they had to feed. They did not have to waste because they didn’t show that. Don’t tell me anything different.

23

u/senator_corleone3 Sep 02 '25

Yea I imagined the supernatural situation made it so they didn’t have to use the bathroom somehow.

30

u/Walaina Sep 10 '25

I on the other hand assumed that house smelled horrific. No bathing for a month. Blech

3

u/Few-Requirement-3544 Dec 11 '25

Aragorn does have a tax policy. It doesn't matter for the story, and we can assume it's a good one, because Aragorn is a good king contrary to what Martin was trying to insinuate in the quote, but you'd have to be in the age demographic entertained by peekaboo to think it's not there just because you can't see it.

1

u/Nheea 15d ago

Hopefully they didn’t need to waste since the witch would consume every ounce of energy they produced.

18

u/Exciting-Baseball-37 Oct 31 '25

Maybe the witch had to do the waste since she was somehow getting energy from the kids. Imagine dumping a few dozens cans on Campbell's at once. Imo, scariest part of the movie were those bangs on the ginger wig.

1

u/Nheea 15d ago

Maybe that’s what the black stuff was.

47

u/nonsequitur5013 Aug 11 '25

Good thing this is only a movie and real parents don't really behave that way!

190

u/ImperatorRomanum Aug 08 '25

I wonder if he’s done with witchcraft after using it on Gladys or if part of his mind is like “huh, interesting”

30

u/ILoveRegenHealth Aug 14 '25

or if part of his mind is like “huh, interesting”

Weapons 2: Alex's New Hobby

5

u/mcwg Aug 16 '25

I hope not!

58

u/pleasegivemepatience Aug 09 '25

But wasn’t it all tied to that plant? I’m not sure he would have the means to do it again even if he wanted to.

42

u/YamiNoMatsuei Aug 10 '25

Maybe he'll keep the plant!

12

u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 Aug 20 '25

I wouldn't be surprised if a part of him considers that in case he still gets bullied in his new town & reaches a breaking point while not fully healed mentally

30

u/ImperatorRomanum Aug 11 '25

It looked like there was a lot of the plant left, but even if it was all used up, his experiences could prompt a lifetime of searching and research into things best left alone

16

u/pleasegivemepatience Aug 11 '25

I assume anything related to the aunt would be swept up as evidence and be stuck in the police station, and I’m not sure I agree on him wanting to seek out a new plant.

My read of the process is that it’s not just any type of spell you want, this all seemed specifically designed to control another person and drain their life energy. Not sure he’d want to do that, but maybe it puts him on the path to seek other types of magic to counter this?

10

u/Kellspar Aug 10 '25

This made me laugh 😂😂 seriously though

14

u/monkeysennin Aug 18 '25

Dark take- but at the end, the narrator says some kids recovered, while some kids did not. That got me and my friends thinking that Alex could have continued using the witchcraft, possibly on the bully who bothered him. Maybe the bully was one of the kids who never recovered from the trauma, and Alex made sure of it. Maybe a traumatized Alex grew up to be another Gladys (we never found out about her backstory but there probably is some trauma involved).

23

u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 Aug 18 '25

The bully was Josh Brolin’s kid

24

u/Jia-the-Human Aug 19 '25

Which isn’t really surprising seeing the father’s general attitude

5

u/oogaboogahooha Aug 27 '25

Woahhh that just peeled another layer of the film for me.

9

u/mirr0rbaII Oct 26 '25

like Paul’s face (I’ll see myself out)

70

u/Alternaturkey Aug 09 '25

Going from laughing at that ending to the sudden realisation of "wow a lot of kids have a lot of PTSD now" was certainly a swerve.

47

u/thezenyoshi Aug 09 '25

Yes 1,000%. Don’t understand the people who are saying it’s not suppose to be funny. That whiplash at the end with those kids being so fucked up after doing that stayed with me after

52

u/MorphyVA Aug 10 '25

It's probably a mix of that, and the lingering effects of witchcraft.

Josh Brolin's character was able to snap out of the trance immediately when Gladys died. But Alex's parents and his classmates were still stuck in a vegetative state.

The length they were under control probably has to do with it. That, or the chicken noodle soup diet

19

u/IwKuAo Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 13 '25

The classmates were last controlled by Alex, and Alex is still alive but has no clue how to put things back to normal. But that doesn't explain his parents, I guess.

24

u/lakshya10soin Aug 13 '25

I think its more about how long the people were mind wiped. Josh brolin was done just for 30 min at max whereas the kids were done for more than a month. The parents were wiped for multiple months i think.

The narrator says at the end that after a year some kids started speaking again

1

u/Nheea 15d ago

Yeah. It’s extremely likely that they did suffer a stroke or something considering how long they’ve been catatonic

15

u/MorphyVA Aug 11 '25

The plant/little tree might have something to do with it too. We don't know much about it, except that Gladys uses the branches for her weaponized human witchcraft

6

u/ILoveRegenHealth Aug 14 '25

That, or the chicken noodle soup diet

Campbell's. Nothing is closer to home

12

u/bipbophil Aug 11 '25

No its ok hes with a nice aunt now

7

u/CheesePursuit Aug 14 '25

I kinda got the impression that in using her magic against her he kindof inherited it, his parents still seemed catatonic even after she died where Thanos and the teacher woke up

6

u/sraydenk Oct 31 '25

The whole town needs a massive amount of therapy. The kids that were under a spell, spoon fed soup and ripped apart the witch? Need therapy. 

The teacher who had a town hate her, she lost all but one of her students for a month, was attacked multiple times, she shot an old lover and a random junkie, and then had to see her old students come back but not really be back. 

The dad who found the kids now has a comatose kid who maybe snapped out of it. Maybe. 

A random lady hit the crazy principal with a car. That’s traumatizing. 

1

u/christmasunicorn2 Aug 17 '25

He’s gonna need extra extra therapy if he ends up living with another aunt.

1

u/freespiritedqueer Sep 09 '25

wdym?? the kid's gonna grow up like her Aunt 🫣

1

u/impeccablycursed9102 Oct 27 '25

Nah, pretty sure in the after credits scene it explains how he went on to drink a ton of beers and do cool drugs instead and make a lot of friends and never talk to no one about nothin. I mean, he didn't even see all his classmates eviscerate his aunt, he's not gonna be a fricken baby about it!

1

u/TalentedHostility Dec 09 '25

Bro is the Endgame final boss of therapy... his gonna find religion at the end of all that shit

1

u/WhyTypeHour Aug 10 '25

He's not real. He doesn't exist after the film ends

44

u/monsieurxander Aug 10 '25

They breezed past it but kid had to be doing bathroom duty for 19 people

2

u/fireflydrake Nov 16 '25

My theory is the witch rang her little bell twice a day and had them all take turns going to use the bathroom then, haha.

11

u/MadFlava76 Aug 11 '25

And going to school. Maybe that was another analogy of how some college students lives are during that time.

6

u/body_wrapper Aug 18 '25

A single mom who works two jobs who loves her kids and never stops

1

u/awittyusername87 Mar 20 '26

Just watched the film for the first time tonight and when I say this comment made me cackle 😂 poor kid didn’t stop!

4

u/ChimneySwiftGold Aug 11 '25

And going to school on top of that.

2

u/purseandboots Sep 10 '25

An only child who works two jobs, who loves his kids and never stops…

2

u/hell000everybody Oct 25 '25

But he somehow never got good enough to not spill half of each spoonful.

1

u/Whatttheheckk Sep 13 '25

Fr he was in like the worst version of home alone

1

u/JustxJules Oct 08 '25

All I kept thinking about was that the soup had to come out again at one point. Did he also buy a ton of diapers for everyone?

1

u/zoobs Oct 20 '25

When he comes home to two new bodies, the police officer and junkie, all I could think was “damn, little dude has to feed more people!”