Weapons: Why the Kids Go Missing at Exactly 2:17 (There Are 2 Major Explanations)

Zach Cregger’s 2025 horror film Weapons dominated the box office during its theatrical run. Good word of mouth sent people running to their local theaters, with their arms at their sides, resulting in a haul of well over $200 million — stellar for an original horror film. Of course, not everyone is going to spend money to watch a movie away from home; they’ll wait for it to hit streaming and make all those subscriptions worth it. Weapons is currently gaining some steam on HBO Max, with a whole new audience discovering the brilliance of Cregger’s story and the characters who experience it.

Unlike many horror movies these days, Weapons deliberately avoids addressing every mystery. The main one centers on Aunt Gladys, the villain who digs her claws into the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, and won’t let go. However, Cregger plans to spend more time exploring Gladys in a spinoff movie currently in the works. Weapons‘ other major unanswered question likely won’t get the same treatment, but that’s okay because the answer is there.

Weapons Points Something Out But Never Explains It

The mood at the start of Weapons is very tense. After all but one kid from the same third-grade class disappears in the middle of the night, the town is scrambling for answers. All the fingers are pointing at Justine Gandy, the kids’ teacher, whom some of the parents are convinced is involved. Justine spends a good chunk of the movie gathering information about Alex, the lone remaining student, and mostly comes up empty-handed. It isn’t until a concerned parent, Archer Graff, takes Justine’s word for it and begins helping her that the situation becomes clear. Alex’s aunt, Gladys, is a witch who brainwashed the children in order to feed off their life force and starts controlling other people around town to keep up the ruse.

Alex’s portion of the movie reveals how his aunt came to town and started wreaking havoc almost immediately. When she realized that Alex’s parents weren’t enough for her, she sent her young relative to school and forced him to bring home items belonging to his classmates, which allowed her to perform her ritual. By the time she wrapped everything up, it was 2:17 in the morning, explaining why that specific time was such a massive part of the investigation at the start of the movie. While it’s easy to overlook 2:17 because the movie doesn’t bring it back after showing its origin, a couple of explanations make it a much more important part of the story.

Read Next

Two Years After a Surprising $270 Million Box Office Haul, a Divisive Horror Sequel Is Coming to Netflix

The Time of the Crime in Weapons Could Mean a Couple of Things

The easy answer for why Cregger makes 2:17 AM the specific moment the kids leave home is that it aligns with the story. The second number represents how many kids are gone, while the first is for the people who are left behind, Justine and Alex. It could also be that the “2” serves as a reminder of what Gladys is doing to Alex’s parents, as they are her first victims. Either way, Gladys’ magic may only work a certain way, with her only being able to pull it off at a specific time. However, all that may be a bit too in the weeds. After all, Cregger himself said the number was there to stand out to the audience, nothing more. But he also let another detail of his creative process slip, undermining that account.

While speaking to CinemaBlend, Cregger spoke about his love of Stephen King, specifically The Shining. At one point, he considered setting 2:37 as the time the kids start running, because of the iconic Room 237 from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of King’s work. He decided against that and went for 2:17 instead, but didn’t realize that time also has a strong connection to King. In the author’s version of The Shining, the horrifying room in The Overlook Hotel is 217, not 237. So, it’s entirely possible that Cregger unconsciously switched the number important to him for another. Whatever the filmmaker’s thought process was, it was a good one because he’s still got the world talking months after his film’s release.

Weapons is streaming on HBO Max.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!