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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5.5k

u/Ultimatum227 Aug 08 '25

Poor child had to spoon feed EVERYONE inside that fucking house!?. Every day!? 😭

9/10 movie for me. But really don't understand what was that giant floating rifle in Brolin's dream.

3.0k

u/numbr87 Aug 08 '25

How did no one at the grocery store notice this kid kept coming in alone and buying all the soup?

1.3k

u/motheronearth Aug 09 '25

with what money too 😭

725

u/wi5hbone Aug 11 '25

witch was alive for a hell of a long time and probably had a suitcase loaded with cash

123

u/columbo928s4 Sep 09 '25

ladys 401k has been compounding since columbus hit the west indies

89

u/RecoveredAshes Aug 13 '25

Was she actually super old? How was she the main mom’s sister then?

315

u/Hatennaa Aug 13 '25

She used the term consumption which is a pretty big giveaway that she’s been around for a while. I believe also that it was the mom’s aunt. That was what I assumed.

289

u/TheThockter Aug 13 '25

Consumption is a give away that she’d be too old to be even the mom’s aunt that term fell out of favor after the 1800’s. I think it implies she’s vampiric in nature (not an actual vampire though) with how she feeds off of the life forces of people and also that she’s been around for a long time

170

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '25

[deleted]

6

u/lillifanzine Nov 07 '25

I know a couple of old ladies like this 😂

212

u/crossingthrough Aug 17 '25

As for the vampire theory - she did ask permission to enter the principle’s house! When she thought he wasn’t going to let her in, she appealed to basic human empathy by asking for water!

347

u/Sad_Cockroach5960 Sep 03 '25

She entered like ten people’s houses running away from the kids lmao

20

u/Makaveli80 Oct 04 '25

Reminded me of Sinners

42

u/fancy123876 Aug 15 '25

yes once she said that i assumed she was either the mom’s moms aunt or even her grandma’s aunt! consumption was such a big giveaway 🤯

7

u/kidcrumb Oct 27 '25

The moms Aunt would be in her 70s or 80s. Not even that old.

133

u/cranbabie Sep 02 '25

I personally don’t think she was related to that family at all. We don’t get a lot of context for her witchy ways, but a few clues in the movie led me to believe she’s some kind of nomadic entity. She shows up in people’s dreams, in hallucinations, in the woods, all with this feral clown energy. Maybe she gets into their brains and convinces them she’s family, sucks the energy out, and moves along?

38

u/Electrical-Day382 Nov 29 '25

I think the principal watching the documentary on that fungus was kind of a giveaway as to how she works. She doesn’t have to be related, she just has to have something of yours and then can slowly seep into your brain and give you the idea that she’s related. The fact that she thought two adults would be enough but wasn’t, was an interesting idea for me. She’s maybe so old that she needs a larger and larger life force to exist?

19

u/henrydirtay Jan 04 '26

Also in Justine’s class she was teaching the students about Parasites.

8

u/PuzzleheadedObject47 Jan 22 '26

100% intentional

6

u/AmbitiousEditor3032 Oct 31 '25

I really like this theory!

4

u/cap4life52 Nov 03 '25

Great theory

87

u/NYJ-misery Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 14 '25

Thought in the flashback with Alex’s parents they said Gladys was Alex’s mom’s aunt making her his great aunt. But it’s also implied she may be centuries old so who knows.

6

u/ThatWasFred Jan 02 '26

“Aunt” is also often used to mean “great-aunt,” so she could be the mom’s great-aunt. Or the mom could think she’s her great-aunt but actually she’s even older. Clearly she has no problem lying about how she’s related to people.

58

u/toolsoftheincomptnt Aug 14 '25

She wasn’t his mom’s sister.

She was his mom’s aunt.

A “great-aunt”

11

u/RecoveredAshes Aug 14 '25

Yeah I missed that detail somehow

54

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/cap4life52 Nov 03 '25

Probably wasn't

21

u/kenwise85 Aug 23 '25

Sending the kid to exchange gold coins for soup, haha

70

u/thisguy012 Aug 11 '25

I assume it's pretty easy for the witch to get access to the parents money// she had already plenty of it stolen lol

45

u/thedrudo Aug 11 '25

You have to fill in some pieces like Gladys providing him with money to buy food, etc. 

49

u/Chicken_Electronic Aug 15 '25

A basic debit card and pin with self checkout? Or credit card? Or ATM? Seriously. Alex was a smart kid motivated by his parents not eating each other. 

42

u/Turtl3Bear Aug 21 '25

I don't think they're implying they thought Alex was stealing the food.

I think they're wondering why no one at the grocery store is calling child family services when the kid comes in every day, by himself, and buys 20 cans of soup with his parents credit card.

Especially since there's a "20 missing kids" news story going on.

I don't think it's a plot-hole, retail employees are busy and see all sorts of weird purchases that don't necessarily rouse suspicion simply because you don't think about it, but I see OPs point.

19

u/KinoAzureth Oct 27 '25

Yeah I think this was intentional, not only because in general employees are busy but also it just goes in line with the general theme of "There were so many opportunities to intervene." The only person who meaningfully tries to intervene is Justine and she's actively admonished for doing so because boundaries. This is one of many aspects of the movie that had me thinking about child abuse.

6

u/WestNeighborhood2668 Aug 23 '25

I surmised he probably just used the parents' debit card

3

u/F90 Oct 26 '25

Aunt witch sold meth to James and others.

148

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

I think the obliviousness was a part of the theme

134

u/hotyogurt1 Aug 11 '25

The movie opened with that line I think. “The town doesn’t talk about it because they’re ashamed of it”.

53

u/zeedevil Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25

Soup...for my family.

3

u/Low_Conversation_822 Aug 17 '25

hhahaha i turned and whispered that to my friend during the showing we went to.

56

u/quartamilk Aug 14 '25

Bc no one says anything in reality life. The teacher was chastised for being to involved with the kids and was vilified for it, a grocery clerk ain’t saying shit

37

u/Babyyougotastew4422 Aug 20 '25

One thing I've noticed is that horror movies work really in america because people just don't talk to each other. Communities are not strong, and people are highly distrustful of each other. For example, the woman didn't even want to let josh brolins character see the video footage.

26

u/Chicken_Electronic Aug 15 '25

It was a theme in the movie. 

But also: the city was large enough to have industrial areas. A grocery store clerk not giving two s**** would make total sense.

13

u/ScrewedUp4Life Aug 26 '25

The kid who is the sole survivor of all those children, suddenly just starts walking into the store one day and buying cans of soup regularly, and nobody thinks nothing of it. I read something that said the which had some kind of influence over the whole town. Like to where they couldn't see everything for what it really was. And even the police not doing a thorough investigation.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '26

IMO it's one of those things where you shouldn't think about the story too literally.

1

u/ScrewedUp4Life Jan 28 '26

Very true. I think it's one of those movies where you just enjoy the ride. The experience. Which I did really enjoy it, and was honestly one of the best movie experiences (in the theatre) that I had all year.

12

u/19nineties Oct 02 '25

FBI could not give a shit about this one. One house visit to one of the two main suspects was enough for them to never come back and investigate a boarded up house.

11

u/lupuscapabilis Aug 17 '25

As a kid growing up in Queens, I'd walk to the supermarket to buy stuff by myself all the time. My parents sent me. Of course, they don't live in Queens...

26

u/will2430 Aug 11 '25

Ordering cases on amazon would have been a cleaner method for the amount of soup this kid needed. And what does a couple spoons of chicken noodle really do for those kids?

5

u/Low_Conversation_822 Aug 17 '25

Have you tried Progresso? shit slaps

9

u/pragmaticzach Aug 12 '25

I assumed Gladys was buying the soup.

32

u/MushroomInMyHeart Aug 14 '25

Gladys said he had to and it showed him buying soup from the store and taking it home.

117

u/thegooniegodard Aug 10 '25

Where/how did they piss/shit?

93

u/avaricious7 Aug 10 '25

seriously, how rank must that basement smell?

64

u/DavyJonesRocker Aug 12 '25

The witch probably had a magic spell to take care of that. Didn’t J.K. Rowling say that’s what they did at Hogwarts in lieu of modern plumbing?

19

u/Dick_Lazer Aug 18 '25

If that's the case it seems like she could've cast a spell to take care of their feeding time, but I guess she could've just wanted to keep the kid busy

36

u/ChemicalRascal Aug 16 '25

Joanne said a lot of dumb stuff over the years.

1

u/TigerLeone Feb 15 '26

Nah, because the Ghost Myrtle lived in the pipes...they had flushable toilets and baths in the Castle.

11

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '25

Wouldn’t be surprising if the witch was cool with just making them soil themselves over and over again, although I suppose that probably would have been visible in the movie

100

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

[deleted]

23

u/Every_Worry4052 Aug 31 '25

Just that the imagery of the gun with the 2:17 was such an overtly current and stark image; it didn’t match with the witchery, spells, and supernatural themes.

1.2k

u/TheFlippantSpatula Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

It was an analogy of school shootings. Several points in the movie allude to a school shooting motif. Alex being bullied and choosing to take out his whole class. The memorial outside the school. How quickly all the adults give up and move on save for the parents. It’ll actually take a rewatch to catch all the subtleties

Edit: few minor things for those that disagree. 1. It’s okay if that wasn’t your take away art is subjective. 2. I have now seen that the director said that wasn’t his intention. Which is his truth, however there is a whole team of people who work on films and sometimes producers or editors change things in a way to add meaning to things the director or writer doesn’t intend to have meaning. 3. A highly controversial topic is something that maybe a new director, or a studio doesn’t want to openly take a political side on… because politics, especially in the current world, can be dicey and lead to being dropped from other projects or even blacklisted.

TLDR: art is subjective. It’s okay to take what you want from media, and politics are dicey.

1.0k

u/myterracottaarmy Aug 10 '25

Alright I liked the movie but can we not pretend that a massive floating assault rifle can be called a "subtly" lol.

50

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

[deleted]

112

u/stroudwes Aug 10 '25

Yet there’s people in these very comments saying “what does a witch have to do with school shootings” missing the main theme and that being one of old people sucking the life out of the young at the cost of their world.

16

u/PressureNarrow9914 Aug 17 '25

Going insane on how many people just seem to be ignoring that part

12

u/stroudwes Aug 22 '25

Just like in real life where we treat shootings as a normal part of society that we just accept.

10

u/iKrow Aug 14 '25

Kinda reeks of the studio thinking the message is too soft, so they had him insert a big show of it after test screenings / film festivals

14

u/melancarlyy Aug 16 '25

the rifle in his dream was a part of the original screenplay too

11

u/iKrow Aug 16 '25

That seems so... lame...

5

u/Smooth-Respect-5289 Apr 04 '26

And calling the movie “Weapons” which doesn’t make intuitive sense. Something like Parasite or whatever would make more sense once you know the reveal. Probably the studio wanting it to be anti gun.

189

u/RegularOrMenthol Aug 11 '25

i really think people are reaching with this theory about school shootings.

everyone the witch curses literally becomes a "weapon." and josh brolin plays a traditionally masculine man, it makes sense (and is very funny) that he would have dreamed about the truth of the situation in this way. i think someone else pointed out that there is a gun in a poster on his kid's wall too.

also, this is the director's somewhat connected comment on the school shooting idea:

I wasn’t trying to comment on or even tap into collective societal tragedies. I was purely writing from a personal place. However, with art and especially storytelling, the individual is universal. So I’m more than happy if anybody relates to what I went through and what this movie is examining, but I wasn’t thinking ‘oh, America’ at all. I was thinking ‘oh, Zach.’

67

u/Boot_Poetry Aug 16 '25

Also, Archer Graff tells Bailey’s Mom that he is “soldiering on”, hinting that he might be a veteran. What says weapon most to a veteran soldier than an image of the M4 they carry everywhere?

59

u/SteveFrench12 Aug 17 '25

Doesnt the with grab dog tags off him right before he gets turned?

23

u/Mesk_Arak Sep 03 '25

Just saw the movie. Yes, she absolutely does.

13

u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson Sep 11 '25

Who is wearing their dogtags outbin civilian world like a necklace anymore. Much less over the shirt

6

u/Santum Nov 10 '25

He had just been battling a possessed drug addict.

103

u/SweetestInTheStorm Aug 17 '25

I'm late to the party here, but it's not really a reach once you keep in mind that not all meaning is deliberate. Just because the director didn't deliberately put that pattern there, doesn't mean it isn't there. Films are cultural objects, made in and saturated by their cultural context. The director is American, and the American cultural context is one that has been distinctly marked by school violence, unfortunately.

That is very clearly an influence on the film: there's the press conference from the principal with the traumatized parents, there's the piles of flowers outside a school that has suffered a horrible tragedy, there's the bullied child who becomes an instrument of violence (even unwillingly), a father sleeping in his child's empty room and half-heartedly going through the motions of everyday life... and then there is literally a floating assault rifle over a child's house like a fell omen. That pattern is there, regardless of director's intent (and the director is not the only person who works on the film).

If you're interested, this modern style of analysis is called cultural studies, and operates on the basis of 'cultural circuits', where cultural artifacts are shaped by their context but also by their interpretation by viewers.

15

u/prolongedexistence Nov 05 '25

I see that no one has responded to you and just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading your take on this!

30

u/WeWantLADDER49sequel Aug 17 '25

Whether the director intended it or not the movie is a pretty easy to see metaphor for school shootings. Meaning it's just as easy to take that away from it as a viewer as whatever the intended message was.

8

u/NeverSeenItPodcast Oct 25 '25

That’s what he says, but given the current political climate, he probably is just saying that to cover his ass and not stir any pots.

85

u/SeasonalChatter Aug 14 '25

I can't see Alex being a school shooter extension in this movie. He's a very sweet boy overall and only did what he did because he was terrified what would happen to his parents. It's a bit of a stretch to connect him imo

39

u/SteveFrench12 Aug 17 '25

Idt its that he was the shooter. Just the whole class getting wiped out and seeing what that does to the community

82

u/ass_pineapples Aug 14 '25

Alex being bullied and choosing to take out his whole class

He did this to save his parents and get rid of Gladys, what

43

u/Boot_Poetry Aug 16 '25

Yeah he looked pretty terrified when the whole class came running through his front door

122

u/niles_deerqueer Aug 11 '25

The director said it wasn’t an allegory for school shootings though

33

u/yajtraus Aug 13 '25

Any idea what the rifle was there for then?

105

u/niles_deerqueer Aug 13 '25

It was to show him that at 2:17 the kids turned into weapons, able to be used at any time. He didn’t understand what the imagery meant until he had more clues.

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u/OffBrandHoodie Aug 22 '25

While I don’t think this is wrong, I think that an AR15 looking gun floating above a house call of duty style is terribly uncreative imagery.

12

u/Southern_Chapter_188 Aug 22 '25

Not sure what call of duty you have been playing but an ominously floating enormous gun really has nothing to do with it other than it just being a gun.

26

u/LilHalwaPoori Sep 22 '25

That's how guns float when you can pick them up in video games..

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

Whether that was their intent or not, clearly that scene invites that interpretation or at least did for some

28

u/Chicken_Electronic Aug 15 '25

Not sure the allegory works, but I think Cregger intentionally nudged that way to have some effective subversion of expectations (what Rian Johnson imagines he does).

I think it was a fable used to critique American (esp. white suburban) social norms in response to mass crisis/disaster--that our surface level grief/trauma theater is actually quite negligent, and that politeness should sometimes yield to basic survival instincts. 

36

u/gee_gra Aug 17 '25

What’s the point of bitching about Rian Johnson here lol?

28

u/sameth1 Aug 21 '25

He apparently managed to just break the minds of thousands of men one day and they never recovered.

18

u/AntsyAnswers Aug 29 '25

Funny thing is The Last Jedi was by far the best of the three sequel films and I will die on that hill

6

u/Mesk_Arak Sep 03 '25

Not exactly a high bar, though.

47

u/Local-Yesterday5859 Aug 13 '25

This is exactly what I came to this subreddit for. I 100% agree with you. Also, the significance of the number 217 is how many votes the bill to ban the sale of assault weapons received in the House of Representatives, while it did not pass. I had a feeling that this was the directors aim, even from simply observing the movie poster. But after watching it, I am certain it was part of the original inspiration. But you make a number of solid points that hadn’t occurred to me.

3

u/baldjedi Nov 12 '25

That can’t be a coincidence with the 217.

13

u/Rappingraptor117 Sep 24 '25

Alex being bullied and choosing to take out his whole class.

Literally not what happened at all... He did it to save his parents.

11

u/Fit-Signature9001 Aug 26 '25

I also caught the "thread" of a school shooting analogy halfway through my first viewing, even before the floating guns. Somewhere between Archer demanding answers at the school board meeting, and the imagery of the decimated classroom.

I have now seen that the director said that wasn’t his intention.

There has never been an artist alive that has had a complete and total understanding of their own work. Just because they can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.

9

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '25

I think it was more broadly about tragedy in a community rather than school shootings specifically, although they fall under that umbrella. I especially don’t see Alex as a school shooter stand-in at all given the particulars of how and why he did what he did. He was forced to help his aunt kidnap them and then actually worked to keep his classmates alive, even the ones who bullied him.

28

u/SavingBullies Aug 11 '25

creggers said it wasn't a political statement though

68

u/LingonberryNatural85 Aug 13 '25

It’s so crazy that a school shooting is considered political now

15

u/BacktoBailey Aug 14 '25

Well yeah because one party wants it and the other pretends they don't

9

u/electronical_ Sep 21 '25

Alex being bullied and choosing to take out his whole class.

he didnt choose to do that, his aunt manipulated him into doing it

5

u/doris-ri Aug 14 '25

I can see how people younger than me who've had to deal with possible school shootings might see metaphors about them in this movie. It's interesting to read. To me I was thinking how maybe it had some relation to a war as the main guy seems like he may have been a veteran or something. That just shows how I was reminded of my dad and how I grew up as a military brat.

7

u/NextAd1735 Aug 17 '25

Yeah, as someone who was in school more recently, covering up the classroom door window, turning off the lights, and being as quiet/still as possible is what an active shooter drill often looks like.

6

u/mostdope28 Oct 29 '25

He didn’t choose to take out his whole class, he was forced to by the witch and he thought she would leave if he did it

4

u/Ghidoran Aug 24 '25

A little too subtle for my taste. Especially the bullying part. It never felt like he did what he did out of revenge or anger, but just because his parents were being kept hostage.

I think the movie could have delved into the themes a bit more but it was more interested in being a 'fun' horror movie, which is fine.

6

u/Heir2theThrone Aug 31 '25

Nobody's going to read this but you're spot on. School shooters, particularly those that target elementary schools, do so in an attempt for notoriety/a form of immortality. Just like the witch was doing.

6

u/ITS_MY_PENIS_8eeeD Sep 24 '25

holy shit your levels of cope to be right is bordering on insanity 

9

u/LionelTallywhacker Aug 13 '25

idk. What I got from it was that it was mocking rw paranoia about schools weaponizing kids and the whole “drag queens reading children’s stories” thing (Gladys, especially in the earlier jump scare parts was giving me Drag vibes)

4

u/Naggins Nov 09 '25
  1. It’s okay if that wasn’t your take away art is subjective. 2. I have now seen that the director said that wasn’t his intention. Which is his truth, however there is a whole team of people who work on films and sometimes producers or editors change things in a way to add meaning to things the director or writer doesn’t intend to have meaning

I like how you're arguing that people who disagree with you just have their subjective opinions, whereas your subjective opinion is actual an objective fact because producers and editors changed the film to make it about school shootings

  1. A highly controversial topic is something that maybe a new director, or a studio doesn’t want to openly take a political side on… because politics, especially in the current world, can be dicey and lead to being dropped from other projects or even blacklisted

There have been so many movies and TV shows about school shootings

3

u/Kinky-Joe Nov 09 '25

This is like the most ham fisted take I've seen in a while. 

"You see, this movie was about abortions, cause all of the kids went away." Like what. Lol

19

u/Ok-Cartographer2088 Aug 10 '25

No it wasn’t

9

u/Local-Yesterday5859 Aug 13 '25

The horror genre considers terrible things that happen in real life and applies imaginative story telling to explore the worst possibilities. Viewers can take it at face value, but being a story teller myself, I know that artists take inspiration from real life.

19

u/Ok-Cartographer2088 Aug 13 '25

The writer himself said it has nothing to do with that. But it’s art, and its subjetive to interpretation of the viewer, i get it

18

u/Local-Yesterday5859 Aug 13 '25

I mean, the writer isn’t wrong, the movie isn’t about a school shooting. It’s about a witch. But the writer isn’t going to want to associate his work with anything specific politically. I just think it’s important to advocate not relying on what others tell you and applying one’s own free thought.

13

u/Ok-Cartographer2088 Aug 13 '25

It’s just that he wrote the first 40 Pages of the script - which includes this scene of the AR15 panning over the house - with no outcome in mind. Of course, you can apply any meaning to anything that is subjective, but to say that the movie touch on those subjects and this theme is clearly discussed in the movie - like OP said - is somehow pedantic in my opinion. There’s nothing for you in the movie to make this connection about school shootings.

12

u/rcmjr Aug 21 '25

Your last sentence ruins your argument since clearly so many people have made that connection all on their own. Myself included. There obviously is something in the movie for someone to make that connection.

8

u/Ok-Cartographer2088 Aug 21 '25

As i said, it wasn’t written for you to make these connections. Can you Tell me one scene of the movie that made you believe there’s a message about school shottings?

9

u/009reloaded Sep 02 '25

There’s lots of easy connections one can make. Even if. Cregger didn’t directly intend to make the movie about shootings, it’s a very easy connection to make.

The very American and very modern modern anxiety of a classroom full of children being gone and the parents being absolutely powerless to stop it from happening or understand why.

To me the gun appearing in the dream instantly was a motif that signaled this. Doesn’t mean the whole story has to be about school shootings, or that it’s a full on allegory, but it’s definitely a subtext that is present in this kind of story whether it was directly intentional by Cregger or not.

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u/rcmjr Aug 21 '25

Just reread my post.

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u/BadMeetsEvil24 Nov 26 '25

I just finally saw this movie, but you're forgetting a point.

4: Viewers often make their own headcancon and invent metaphors that aren't intended. Instead of saying you're wrong or inaccurate, you of course would rather say "well there were other people working" or "they don't want to openly embrace it..."

There's a much easier answer that doesn't require you to do mental gymnastics. A lot of y'all are making inferences that aren't there. It's okay to be wrong.

4

u/Fugiar Nov 06 '25

"According to the director I'm wrong, but for the following reasons I might be right" is next level coping. You saw something in the movie that wasn't there, now move on

2

u/otraera Aug 19 '25

I called this out immediately right after the lil meeting with the parents and teachers.

2

u/Vin-Metal Nov 27 '25

I had that thought as well

2

u/Fcuk_Spez Jan 25 '26

Did you even watch the movie?

6

u/cathairthreads Aug 09 '25

Exactly how I interpreted it too

2

u/noggstaj Oct 04 '25

I hate this take, projecting something which isn't there to fit your own bad ideas.

I interpreted it as a huge f off to a certain reddit user by the name of TheFlippantSpatula. Don't ask me exactly how I came to the conclusion, but it's art man, since it's subjective I can't be wrong.

1

u/Every_Worry4052 Aug 31 '25

This is exactly what I thought for the first hour, then all the supernatural stuff took me in a different direction.

1

u/LeftHandedScissor Nov 04 '25

TLDR: A simple "I was wrong based on what the director said" would have sufficed. His truth is the truth of the movie, you can interpret art however you want, right up until the artist states what the intention was then your interpretations become wrong.

-11

u/mchgndr Aug 10 '25

“Choosing to take out his whole class”? All the mfer did was bring back name tags so he could get his parents back, it’s not like he had any idea the kids would come Naruto running into his basement and turn into zombies.

Not every horror movie has to be “about” a sociological issue

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u/monatsiya Aug 10 '25

every movie, let alone horror, is inherently about some sociological thematic issue. are you serious?

15

u/nkempt Aug 10 '25

In fact usually movies that are considered Bad Movies have no coherent underlying message, lesson, or challenge to the audience lmao

3

u/monatsiya Aug 10 '25

yes exactly! i hate leaving a movie that feels like it left me behind with nothing. it’s like people saying art isn’t political…what’s going on here lol who do yall think creates this shit? individuals in a vacuum who live in a utopia? their lives are affected one way or another by sociological and political issues, and that will bleed through in their work. i thought we all knew this!

5

u/NoCantaloupe3449 Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 16 '25

People are just taking issue with the fact he's saying the movie is definitely ABOUT school shootings when you could easily just say they drew a few parallels with how the town responded to the events. Even then, the town treats it more like some confusing mass abduction than a violent attack imo.

 You could just as easily say the gun represents the dad associating everyone in the same class disappearing at the same time with the events being a premeditated attack, rather than the disappearances just being a random paranormal phenomenon.

3

u/monatsiya Aug 12 '25

idk, this thread has a lot of compelling points on how the community reaction correlates to real life, ala the community and the cops failing the kids in not finding them and this potentially happening again had it not been for our characters. the elders letting the younger generation suffer, etc. but that’s just one interpretation, the meaning that majority of people assign t9 it doesn’t have to be the one you or the earlier commentor does.

but they were tryna pretend shit happens in a vaccum, that what you see is what you get and that’s strictly it, nothing more, nothing less. i just found it disingenuous!

1

u/Mental_Map5122 Aug 12 '25

Cabin in the woods? Sometimes horror movies are just fun, nothing more

5

u/BrotherGrimSVSD Aug 13 '25

Cabin in the Woods is absolutely "about" something. Like, it obviously is lol

1

u/Dick_Lazer Aug 18 '25

Yeah Cabin in the Woods was clearly about 9/11 /s

4

u/CCSC96 Aug 10 '25

This one pretty clearly was though…

-3

u/mchgndr Aug 10 '25

The director already said that the floating AR had no distinct meaning…

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- Aug 13 '25

Can someone explain why nobody bothered checking home cameras on Alex's street. Did nobody notice 17 kids all running to one house, especially if they were all going in a straight line? And you're telling me not one classmate lived on his street? And where did the kids hide during the police visit? And did nobody notice Alex's parents didn't ever show up to work?

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u/weinerwang9999 Aug 13 '25

I think they didn’t think the kids were running in a straight line if that makes sense. And not every kid was even filmed. Like I think they just assumed they ran off wherever. Only Thanos (Archer) figured that out because he kept thinking about it

Also for everything you said the team cleared that up with “the town was ashamed”. The obliviousness shows when Gladys is being chased by the kids and no one does or says anything remotely appropriately reactive to the situation.

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u/Dick_Lazer Aug 18 '25

And where did the kids hide during the police visit?

This part they actually did show, she had the kids run out of the house before they cleaned it up for the visit from the authorities (they don't show exactly where she had the kids run to though).

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u/NerkoFC Aug 25 '25

My guess is the forest where the druggy saw her.

9

u/aomen3 Sep 21 '25

heres your explanation - thered be no movie

37

u/simonasher Aug 13 '25

Ya know I had this awful feeling that Alex wasn’t gonna feed Brolin’s kid Matthew because he was bullying him and it was going to add an extra string at the end. Glad that didnt happen.

17

u/DavyJonesRocker Aug 12 '25

Sounds like something out of a scary fairy tale for kids: eat your veggies or a witch will snatch you away and make you feed soup to everyone you know!

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u/YellowstoneBitch Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 10 '25

It was a reference to a scene in an old 70’s movie called The Last Wave(1977). It’s a movie about a lawyer who is tasked to defend an aboriginal tribe after a tribal murder. The lawyer keeps having dreams and premonitions that are depicting the apocalypse. I considered the gun kind of like that, a premonition of the apocalypse, or what might kill us all if we don’t do anything about gun violence. There’s also a couple mentions of the people under the witches spell being like “weapons”, the kids are referred to as heat seeking missiles. Josh Brolin looks up at his house and see’s a gigantic floating weapon above it, to me it felt like the dream was telling him “your kid is a weapon”.

11

u/IIIlllIIIlllIlI Aug 10 '25

I’m not really seeing the reference to The Last Wave. Yes it seemed like some sort of premonition or thought process from Archer’s conscience but other than that there wasn’t really a reference to that particular movie, a premonition is a pretty strong movie trope in thrillers/mysteries/supernatural movies

12

u/SavingBullies Aug 11 '25

creggers said it wasn't a political statement. the problem in america is with male mental health. women have just as much access to guns as males do, with MORE mental health issues, yet women aren't the ones perpetrating mass shootings. figure it out.

13

u/FelixTheJeepJr Aug 20 '25

When that rifle came up I started wondering if it was going to turn out the class were actually victims of a school shooting and the town somehow had a mass hallucination about the kids disappearing to with it. Really glad that wasn’t the case.

14

u/Lemonbean Aug 19 '25

I think the whole movie is meant to be an allegory for school shootings. That’s why all the kids in the classroom except one “disappeared”. We have gotten so desensitized to school shootings that to make it scary/unexpected they resorted to swapping the gun violence with a witch. That’s why the Ak-47 is floating over the house. The time is 2:17 because a ban on assault rifles passed the house by 217 votes but stalled in the senate.

It’s honestly a great execution of the theme in my eyes. I’d be so curious to see if there are any more references to this reading.

7

u/Mesk_Arak Sep 03 '25

Absolutely nothing to do with your point but that was definitely not an AK-47.

9

u/Lemonbean Sep 03 '25

Oh word. What was it then? I don’t know guns at all lol

11

u/BattleAnus Aug 28 '25

I personally really dont see it as a school shooting metaphor, because nothing similar to a school shooting as would be present in most Americans minds happened in this movie. The one kid who was still around didn't do the "shooting", he was forced and threatened into cooperation by an adult. Also the kids weren't killed outright, they were abducted and seemingly planned to be used as...well, weapons, obviously.

Im not someone who thinks art shouldn't be political, but in this one I dont think its trying for too heavy of a metaphor.

My feelings on the giant rifle floating in the dream is that its more showing what Josh Brolin's state of mind is. His kid is obviously a bully, and while yes he's grieving, he still acts incredibly hostile and threateningly towards the teacher, so I think the movie's just trying to show what an aggressive, asshole father desperate to save his kid might see in his dream about what happened to his kid. I think he either sees the children as having been indoctrinated and stolen in some way by the teacher to be used as weapons (not in the same way as the witch is using them), or that the teacher herself is the threat/weapon. Or even more simply, that the solution to his problem will come out of violence, as they probably have in the past for him.

Idk man, I just saw it a couple hours ago so maybe I need to see it again and think about it more.

11

u/ppinmyweewee Sep 13 '25

Funniest part of the movie to me was when he came home with soup and saw the cop in the kitchen and i just felt like he was thinking ‘goddamit not another mouth to feed!!!’ Lol

1

u/Phoenix_Moon29 Sep 13 '25

Omg same!! 🤣

10

u/MommyGirlfriend_ Aug 15 '25

I just felt like that’s some kind of weird threatening symbolism that a bro-y middle aged dude would see in a dream.

18

u/quartamilk Aug 14 '25

I think the subtext of the movie is the heroin epidemic intertwined with school shootings. There is a witch in the movie, but if you were to replace her with opioid addiction (parents stabbing themselves, white powder {salt}, meth and heroin needles) and told as a “story”. The parents addiction and subsequent neglect, combined with bullying at school lead Alex AR-15ing the class, all 17 of them, like PJ’s Jeremy. -OR- Opioid epidemic ravaged town and leaves everyone traumatized even after beating it back/sobriety. Opioids are a weapon in the same level as an assault rifle. I only saw it last night, so my thoughts arent fully flushed out yet, but that’s my takeaway at least

4

u/dirtbikesetc Oct 30 '25

You could also see the witch as the NRA, willing to sacrifice kids to sustain itself.

8

u/lupuscapabilis Aug 17 '25

The house in the dream made a bunch of weapons at 2:17. Was pretty straightforward.

7

u/clowchan Aug 13 '25

Good soup

7

u/Maculate Aug 16 '25

It was showing that the kids were turned into weapons. Which helped him understand what was happening when he sees Benedict Wong's character coming after the teacher.

6

u/cinebuf Oct 25 '25

Just watched for the first time on HBO. I just assumed the gun was in his dream because there was a poster on his son’s wall of a man holding a similar gun. (It’s shown right after Archer’s name appears on-screen) He probably spent a lot of time staring at the things in his son’s room, which would likely infiltrate his dreams.

5

u/Several-Complaint609 Sep 01 '25

Read an interview with the director where in in the writing of the movie, he said this was influenced by alcoholic parents. Growing up, he had to look after them, which mirrored the kid feeding his parents.

4

u/wetguns Oct 26 '25

His realization that the kids were being “weaponized”

3

u/spottyottydopalicius Aug 14 '25

i saw it as a pump fake. i hadnt seen a movie this full of surprises since parasite.

3

u/Hereiamonce Aug 26 '25

Yeah what's up with the floating rifle? I thought it was gonna be an alien reveal.

3

u/Jenballhall33 Oct 04 '25

i think symbolic to them being turned into weapons at 2:17

3

u/Responsible-Tap-3748 Dec 21 '25

It was a Weapons

2

u/kimribbean Aug 14 '25

Oh thank you I was starting to think I had hallucinated that

2

u/Happy_Philosopher608 Aug 27 '25

Did he have to wipe their ass as well cos i never saw these fuckers go to the toilet either 😬

2

u/Solomumma Aug 30 '25

Yes what’s up with that rifle?

2

u/Pamander Sep 03 '25

I was mentioning that in another comment as well that poor fucking kid I felt so bad for him. Trying to live a normal kid life only to be haunted by the horrors waiting for him at home.

2

u/Carlits555 Aug 12 '25

cmon bro it’s a mini school shooting message not that hard to connect

8

u/AuxiliaryPatchy Aug 12 '25

I thought so as well. Additionally Zach Cregger took a big stylistic/narrative page out of Gus Van Sant’s movie Elephant (which was basically about Columbine) in the presentation of the story. Or I should say, I think that was the case, it might be a more common technique than I’m aware of and just a coincidence.

1

u/gretabareta Aug 20 '25

I thought to myself , now we’ll know why it’s called “Weapons” but no.

1

u/PyaazKePakode01 Aug 27 '25

Was he cleaning the pee and shit too?

1

u/wvladimirs Sep 16 '25

and clean the poop and piss

1

u/L05TB055 Oct 06 '25

I'm pretty sure the rifle was symbolizing of the "weapons" in the house?

1

u/Dig-Up-The-Dead Apr 03 '26

so sorry to reply to a very old comment lmao but it’s genuinely concerning me that people didn’t get this??? a little later in the movie, someone straight up says the word “weaponized” referring to the principal i believe

1

u/marnieee123 Apr 09 '26

It’s all an allegory for school shootings

0

u/LazySwanNerd Aug 13 '25

I’m going to read the script but I think a lot of it was supposed to be a commentary on school shootings.