The 'Weapons' Ending, Explained

Cosmopolitan

2 days ago

In 2022, writer-director Zach Cregger delivered Barbarian, a modern horror that begins with a double-booked Airbnb and ends with a breastfeeding monster. Critics and audiences loved Barbarian, framing it as a gold standard of the horror revival, sharing hall of fame real estate with films like The Substance, anything A24 releases, and most recently, Together. With his sophomore project Weapons, Cregger proved he could make lightning strike twice.
Weapons begins with that timely, 'ripped from the headlines' feel – quickly becoming Cregger's creative schtick – with a Pleasantville-esque community processing the disappearance of 17 children from a single classroom. Aside from a hallucinated AR-15 in the clouds about forty minutes into the movie, this is as far as the school shooting implications go.
Julia Garner plays a teacher who arrives at school to find only one student sitting in her classroom. The rest ran away at 2:17am, running out of their homes doing pilates arms. The parents immediately blame the teacher, 'burn the witch!' style; and from there we're taken through the timeline from the perspectives of the townspeople. Beyond Garner, Weapons' ensemble includes Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan.
Like Barbarian before it, Weapons is about the journey and not the destination. It doesn't totally hold water and not everything makes sense in the end, but it's a satisfying 2 hours and 8 minutes.
In seeing the timeline from all six – count 'em, six – key players, nothing really changes. The plot unfolds in a puzzle, with each POV adding more context to the tale of the missing children.
In the end, the nucleus of the story is Alex, the sole remaining student of the disappeared class. It was the arrival of his 'great-aunt,' a witchy old bag named Gladys, that emptied his classroom.
Armed with a bell and a talisman, some blood‑soaked branches and personal items, she transforms people into lifeless marionettes, siphoning life to renew herself. When she snaps the branch, the affected person becomes a human weapon with a specific target.
Upon her arrival to Maybrook, she started with Alex's parents, but quickly got the taste for his classmates. She instructs Alex to bring home an item from each of his classmates, activating them at 2:17am, and shepherding them into her basement to keep her young. Little Alex spends his days spoon-feeding soup into the mouths of his parents, friends, and bullies to keep them alive.
At the film's violent climax, Alex and his teacher are fighting off a horde of human weapons. Alex, the 4-foot hero, gets to Gladys's magic stash and uses what he's learned to turn his classmates (still in the basement) against her. The kids go absolutely buck wild and Gladys is killed. After they literally tear her apart, it's like the spell is broken and they are returned to reality – but not completely.
Weapons begins and ends with a child's narration, concluding that the children are home but braindead and mostly mute, except for a few. Alex's parents are hospitalized and he is sent to live with another aunt. Sequel when?
'Weapons' is playing in theaters now.
Get Tickets