Weapons Hides Its Big Reveal Right From the Start (Did You Catch It?)

Filmmaker Zach Cregger’s new psychological horror mystery movie, Weapons, had an impressive opening over the weekend at the box office, introducing fans to a handful of memorable characters and solidifying Cregger’s brand of unexpected horror storytelling infused with perfectly timed comedy. Following 2022’s Barbarian, the writer and director has made a name for himself as a filmmaker who specializes in originality, even when he’s touching on familiar tropes, and effectively blending genres in a way that keeps audiences guessing and entertained. To our benefit, Cregger seems to enjoy developing his characters and creating experiences for viewers, and that includes how he slyly offered a major hint to fans towards the beginning of Weapons, teasing the answer behind the horror movie’s big mystery.

The realization that something relatively innocuous is actually an in-your-face clue planted early on in the film should give fans another level of appreciation for Cregger’s sense of humor and clever, playful filmmaking.

Warning: Major spoilers below for Weapons

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Weapons follows the perspectives of multiple characters to piece together the mystery behind 17 kids who went missing after they ran out of their homes at 2:17 a.m. one night. The story vignettes begin with Justine (Julia Garner), the teacher at the center of the disappearances, and much scrutiny, because the missing students all came from her classroom. A tense town meeting, held about a month after the bizarre event, confirms that many parents blame Justine or suspect she was somehow involved. One parent in particular, Archer (Josh Brolin), who is wrapped up in guilt and grief over his missing son, Matthew, takes his frustrations and suspicions out on Justine one night by vandalizing her car, painting the word “WITCH” in red, an act of vandalism that is showcased for the rest of the movie.

While audiences likely initially assume this incident of someone tagging Justine’s car is a minor part of the story and an encapsulation of Archer’s mindset, it becomes apparent as Weapons plays out that the word “witch,” plainly hidden in bright, bold letters, is actually a major tell about who is responsible for the missing kids.

Weapons Villain Really Is A Witch All Along

Weapons eventually introduces us to Gladys (Amy Madigan), who has come to town to live with her niece and her niece’s husband — the parents of the movie’s key young character, Alex (Cary Christopher) — due to what appears to be a terminal medical condition. Alex is the only student in Justine’s classroom who didn’t take off in the middle of the night, and that’s because he’s being terrorized and manipulated by Aunt Gladys, a witch whose dark magic spell is responsible for the missing children.

Justine may have been accused of being a witch, serving as the town’s scapegoat, but it’s a dying Gladys who has set everything in motion. Gladys attempts to save her own life by feeding off the lives of others, and siphoning lifeforce from young kids is apparently the most efficient means of restoring her youth. She uses blood magic and branches of an ancient-looking tree to force people to do her bidding; sometimes that means standing guard for her, attacking and killing others who are getting too close to the truth; or, in the case of the 17 children, standing catatonic in a basement as she feeds off of them. The longer she works her magic, the more Gladys regains her youthfulness, and her health improves: her hair slowly begins to grow back, her wrinkles lessen, and her movement becomes more fluid as Cregger uses a familiar tale of a witch using magic to steal youth as the foundation of a much larger, more meaningful story.

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Beyond the significant clue spelled out in red paint that a witch is behind the mass disappearance and strange events happening in town, there are also casual hints that Gladys is also far older than she appears. When speaking with Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) at the elementary school, for example, Gladys lies about why Alex’s parents are not able to come into the school to meet with him themselves, saying they are sick with “a touch of consumption.” Marcus calls out the archaic phrase that was used to refer to tuberculosis in the past, which Gladys brushes over easily with her faux eccentric public persona.

By the time you reach the end of Weapons, Cregger has answered the biggest mystery revolving around the missing kids, and, at the same time, left audiences with a healthy curiosity about Gladys. Fans are given all of the information they need to know for the story, but there’s enough left unspoken about Madigan’s character that makes you want to dive more into her history. That curiosity, along with the structure of Weapons, lends itself well to wanting to rewatch the movie to revisit Cregger’s engaging film and to seek out any other tidbits that may have been overlooked the first time around.

Weapons is now playing in theaters.