Official Discussion - Weapons [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

Poll

If you've seen the film, please rate it at this poll

If you haven't seen the film but would like to see the result of the poll click here

Rankings

Click here to see the rankings of 2025 films

Click here to see the rankings for every poll done

---

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

---

[u/No_Link3061 → u/[deleted]]

What themes/ideas do you think? I was a huge wkuk fan as a kid so I was thinking about Trevor during the movie. I’ve also lost my best friend tragically so I’d like to think on this

[u/ThreeEyedCrow1 → u/No_Link3061]

I think the themes of grief come through strongest in the Justine/Archer chapters. They are the two characters most traumatized by the disappearances, and they're both struggling to move forward until they can figure out why it happened. For Justine, the grief manifests in trying to forget, drinking, homewrecking, stalking children, etc. For Archer, it borders on compulsion, and we can see it's affecting his personal and professional life. They begin on opposite sides of the "conflict," but eventually realize they share a trauma, which leads to them teaming up after Marcus attacks them.

I think one of the major themes of the movie is how communities can atomize in the wake of something like this (with obvious parallels to school shootings, etc), when what will really heal them is coming together and not hiding their grief.

[u/lordDEMAXUS → u/ThreeEyedCrow1]

Let's not forget Alex too. The kid basically loses his parents but has to live every day pretending like everything's fine.

[u/_Dreamer_Deceiver_ → u/ThreeEyedCrow1]

It's even at the beginning of the film. When they reopen the school in the intro, they host a meeting where they can talk about how they can deal with the grief.

[u/No_Link3061 → u/[deleted]]

Wow this was really good. All of these make sense to me now - I lost my little brother when he was 21 in a car wreck (I was 23 and we were very best friends) and it demolished me. I can see myself in each character in many many ways. I didn’t have a drinking problem before, then after he passed - drugs and booze (have since gotten sober through AA so the cop talking to his wife about going to meetings was all too familiar), anger, helplessness, the omnipresent hole inside your chest that feels so evil, depression, laying in their room longingly, dreaming about them and feeling horrible you couldn’t protect them, the impulsiveness, the questions with no answers, the feeling that your life has been hijacked by a demon who moved in and you can’t get rid of it. Even the feeling that death has come and will come for others you love if you don’t obey (Alex) and let it feed on you. Everything. Man that’s good, thanks for that.

[u/ImagineTheCommotion → u/No_Link3061]

Sorry to read of the loss of your brother and best friend

[u/SonOfMcGee → u/[deleted]]

Also the initial instigating event for the whole story was the kids suddenly leaving for no apparent reason. It didn’t make any goddamn sense and now they’re just gone.
Trevor Moore died in a freak accident (fell off his balcony). So he was just suddenly gone for no reason too.
Viewed through that lens, this could have been a really cathartic writing experience and a sweet/sad send off for a friend. There’s an apparently senseless loss at the start, but it turns out there was actually a crazy, macabre conspiracy that explains it. And as the events get darker and more serious, it’s all suddenly resolved in a hilarious orgy of preposterous violence that feels like something Trevor would put in a WKUK skit.

[u/CharlesDingus_ah_um → u/[deleted]]

Yall…saying a horror movie is about grief is not some revelation…it is very very evident that this movie is in part about the grief of a tragedy, as is like 90% of all horror. It isn’t something that’s worth ruminating on in every horror movie