Oh, so, saw Weapons, have thoughts about it, so spoilers below the read more!
So, first, an AMAZING horror movie. Great scares and atmosphere, plenty of eerie and creepy moments, wonderful use of foreshadowing, good soundtrack, very human characters, and its imagery leaves lots of room for interpretations. The movie plays itself as a mostly grounded mystery, with dreams in the earlier acts hinting to the supernatural factor in the movie, the principal's attack making the supernatural more real, putting it in the light rather than 2:17 at night, and then unveiling it as the child's "aunt" to usher in the last act.
Starting with the horror itself, it's great. The tension is SOLID and makes everything from the jump scares to the quiet creepy moments hit good. The scene when the teacher falls asleep in her car across the child's house and the kid's mother does that same unsettling run the children did to her car. Stands in front of it, looks at her, and goes off screen, unlocks the backseat door, gets in, brings scissors to her face, and... cuts a piece of hair. So creepy. The whole theater gasped during this scene. Another scene: the addict catches a glimpse of the "aunt" with her bright orange wig against the green forestry. He runs to his tent, fearfully, and it slowly unzips to reveal the police officer who was chasing him. Point is, the movie used tension for effective scares really well. None of them feel particularly cheap because of the tension.
The other horrors of the movie are also well done. The image of an empty class save for a lone child and his teacher is haunting. The weaponized under the aunt-witch's control under her complete control is skin crawling to think about. If they talk, it is monotone and lifeless. They are motionless unless she needs them to move. The Child's parents stab themselves in their faces with a fork, leaving bloodied holes, at her will, and stop at her will. She said she could even make them eat each other if so desired. Told the Child so herself. The children stand motionless in the basement, neat and evenly spaced. The principal stood motionless, until ordered to kill his partner and then track down the teacher across the town to kill her too. The depiction of the loss of autonomy is just, eugh... Makes my skin crawl. Loss of autonomy always gets me, I don't like to see it, it breaks my heart I hate it. The thing that really sells it though and makes it sickening? The Child, he still needs to feed them. The aunt-witch won't do it, and can't/won't make them feed themselves. So this little boy buys cans of soup, and feeds them all, spoon by spoon, lifting utensils to their mouths, and all the weaponized can do is try to sloppily slurp it up. I just hope that for the weaponized's sakes that in this state, they're more like automatons rather than people alive and awake and unable to control their own body. The latter is the kinda thing that makes me sick. So, great on the horror movie for getting under my skin 👍
Then there's the witch, the big baddie of the film, hinted at through dreams and brief appearances that the eyes can't trust. She always stands out with her bright orange wig and bright lipstick and eyeshadow against caked on, pasty and pale foundation. It gives the image of a clown, like pennywise, befitting of her targeting the swath of children for this film. Before we see her in her entirety for the first time, we see the bright orange wig we've caught glimpses of prior through frosted glass, blurred before entering the Principal's office and she shows up with a dramatic but cheery personality. She talks fast and polite, but leaves little room for another's words. It shows that she is an effective manipulator in getting what she wants. She was able to find out where the principal live and get personal items of his to initiate the ritual of control over him. She uses her perceived kindness and frailty as an older woman to further help her get what she desires. Makes her a wholly unreconcilable villain. How her magic works is largely unexplained, which k can respect. Leaving some mystery is fine. All we know is that for the spell of control, at bare minimum she needs a stick from her magic tree, her own blood, and item belongings to who she wants to control, a bowl of water, and the hair of someone she wants dead. The Child was also able to replicate this spell to gain control over the other children to kill the aunt-witch, showing us the real power of this spell lies not with her, but the small thorned tree in her possession. However, left unexplained is how exactly the spell of control also ties into keeping her alive. The Witch calls herself "sick." She had explained to the Child that she thought his parents would help her, implying to us that she intended to use their life force to extend hers, or something along those lines, and was using the Child's classmates for the same intentions. That also brings into question is she was actually the child's aunt, or just a witch that has lived for many years, tricking families over many years by some means into thinking she was their family and stealing their life force to extend hers. Imagine, this woman by some magical means, tricks you into thinking she's family, and turns you into marionette automatons and steals your life force, and there's nothing you can do about it. Bleak. And it's possible she's done this many times. Depressing.
Last main paragraph on the horror, the loss of the children is just plain sad and creepy. 18 (I think, give or take a kid or two), gone in the middle of the night, the only evidence of what might've happened to them the grainy camera footage of them running in the dead of night. And also horrifying, the ostracization of the Teacher. Her children, all but one gone, and people, her community, blame her even though she cared for them too. Not horror in any extravagating way, but a real horror all the same. Isolated, hated, lied about, feared, unable to return to her job. Us humans are social animals. These things are like death in all but physicality.
Now, the thing I REALLY love about the movie is the foreshadowing. The Witch is hinted at more explicitly in the Teacher and the Father of one of the missing children's dreams. In the Teacher's dream, it was 2:17 at night, and she was in her classroom. All the children had their heads down. Then, the Child lifted his head, revealing the Witch's pale face. In the Father's dream, he found his son in his home again, except when he turned away and looked at him again, he saw the witch's face and bright wig. Later, when running from the Cop, the Addict sees her head staring at him in the forest. This all leads up to her reveal in her meeting with the Principal. [Side note, what's interesting is why they all saw her. At the time any of them caught a glimpse of her, she had no reason to concern herself with any of them. She had yet to meet any of them, and had yet to pose a direct threat to her. Was this all calls for help from the Weaponized children? Was it fate calling out to them? Warning them? A side effect of the witch using her spells? We can't know, or at least, I can't tell. Though it doesn't particularly matter what the reason was, or even if there was a reason. It made for great foreshadowing.]
Also amazing but small foreshadowing was the Father using bright orange-red paint to write WITCH on the Teacher's car. A complete coincidence on his part, but subtly references the witch's wig. (If I'm remembering correctly, red hair/red-orange, was frequently associated with witches, which is probably why the Witch's wig is that same color.)
Last foreshadowing is the paralleling of the Witch to a parasite, supporting the idea that she was stealing the life force of the Child's parents and the other Weaponized. [weaponized being anyone under her control, sorry I didn't explain this earlier lol. I call them weaponized because of a comment the Father made in the movie and the fact they can be used to hunt someone down] In school, we see the Teacher teaching the children about parasites, asking for examples and getting tapeworm as one answer, and before placing the principal under her control, he and his partner were watching a documentary about parasites, specifically one about the cordyceps that hijacks an ant's body. With this analogy, it's actually pretty clear she's a parasite, feeding off the energy and life of her host, like a tapeworm. However, I will not ignore the inclusion of the cordyceps either. Its full control can be likened to the spell of control the witch uses, taking away autonomy. That begs the question, however, what does the parasite, the Witch, aim to reproduce? All animals live to reproduce, the cordyceps notably take control of an ant in order to reproduce. The black bile/fluid the principal spewed when killing his partner may have some connection to this, perhaps akin to how evil dead's deadites spew black bile to corrupt others and turn them into deadites. When the Cop was killed, the pool of blood around his body and neck where he was shot was also oddly dark, perhaps just the blood, or blood mixed with the black fluid. Whatever the case, in the context of this movie alone, all that can be definitively gleaned and this black fluid is showcasing evil and wicked influence. [Perhaps it is something that would be expanded upon in another film. Proliferation/reproduction are not alone in this film with the cordyceps. The cop and his wife were talking on the phone about trying to conceive, and the cop and the teacher had a short drunk sex scene, so the black liquid and the witch potentially having some connection to proliferation is not out of the blue.]
Next up in the movie, the imagery, also wonderful and rich. There's all sorts of wonderful shots in the movie, but I want to focus on two. First, the thorned tree the Witch used. Thorns represent strength and resilience in all its forms, mental, physical, and emotional, and to grow in these means and to have self-reliance. It represents the perseverance of these things, and the protection of things cherished and of life. The thorns the Witch used serve as an inversion to these concepts. It takes away another's self reliance, reduces vitality in all its forms to nothing, makes people into living things that don't live that only serve to give another their life without their consent, and to be used as weapons to go on the offensive and take more life.
Second, the assault rifle in the Father's dream. In his dream, the Father awakes in his son's bed, and sees him leaving the room. He follows his child outside into greenery, and after exiting the growth, finds himself in front of his house again. Only this time, floating above it is a large assault rifle, ominous like a UFO, the time the children disappeared flashing on it before the gun disappears. While this doesn't foreshadow the fact that the spell of control can be used to weaponized people into a hit man, I believe it is also supposed to invoke the imagery associated with gun violence against children here in America. Considering this is an American movie and takes place in America, this isn't coincidental. Whether by an assault rifle that has no place in suburbia, or a supernatural witch, the outcome was the same: parents left without their child, a community left stunned, angry, saddened, forced to continue with their lives while the police remained useless. Which, brings me to my last point:
The messages. That single image of the assault rifle, floating in the sky for a few moments, solidifies this film as a commentary on police negligence and brutality in America. One of our focal characters is the Cop, a friend of the Teacher, and partner to the chief's daughter. In his section of the film, he chases down the drug Addict when he sees him attempting to break into a building. He catches him, and accidentally stabs himself with a used drug needle the addict forgot about in his pocket, making the cop lose his cool and punch the addict. Knowing he messed up, he disconnected the car dash cam that caught the punch, and released the addict with a warning/threat. Back at the station, he and the chief agree to not to do anything and hope nothing gets noticed. A perfect example of corruption and how police protect themselves and one another rather than uphold the law and obey the rules imposed upon them to maintain the rights of the people in this country.
Their negligence and uselessness is emphasized when the Father went to the chief, asking for an update, anything, just to be assured their detectives and feds were doing everything in their power to find leads and information. Yet, it was the Father by himself that discovered in less than a day where the children ran to using only his ring camera, one other victim's ring camera, a town map, and some of his tools from his construction work. In one day, he found a solid lead, when paid, professional police detectives had turned up nothing for weeks.
So, police suck. Good message to have. [I say this genuinely. Our police force is here only to protect capital, not the people.] So then, what does our witch represent? Potentially, she can represent the disabled, chronically ill, anyone who requires the care and attention of others to get by in life. This can be analogous to how as the aforementioned people require assistance from society, the witch needed to steal the life force of the weaponized to live, effectively conveying that the old, weak, and ill are parasites unto society.
However, this is one interpretation, whether intentional or not. Sometimes, an evil witch is an evil witch. And sometimes, that evil witch can represent the same thing gun violence and school shootings can. The witch, like the assault rifle and gun violence against children in America, represents/is the result of apathy, hatred, cruelty, enjoyment in the simple act of taking of life. The old witch can represent the gerontocracy, the old people who lead our government who have no regard for the people beneath them, younger than them, who only seek to use them for their own gain. With the taking of a live through the power she alone held, she divided and tore asunder a community, dividing it, allowing her to take what she wanted unnoticed. Or at least, almost unnoticed.
Take your pick or both, both interpretations are valid, though, I feel the latter is the intended interpretation. Regardless, the fact the former can be interpreted is of concern to me considering our current political climate and an almost dumbfounding growing admiration for Nazi ideology, wherein disabled, old, and terribly sick people were killed for not being perceived as productive members of society. Another thing I'm not a fan of is the fact that the principal and his partner, who was also a man, got the goriest deaths, alongside the witch herself having a hilarious but gorey death. While I understand this was most certainly written and filmed before trump became president, violently killing the only gay characters doesn't sit well with me. Again, it's probably just the timing, the kairos. If my government and others weren't sliding to the right, I probably wouldn't mind their violent deaths so much. Hell, I'd probably even praise it for being so violent then. It's not like they're the only deaths either. The Witch gets torn asunder by the children, and the Addict and Cop are shot after being weaponized. The latter two deaths are thus comparatively tame, visually anyhow. As it stands, their terrible violent deaths don't sit right with me, but perhaps that's the point too. They're just a normal, happy couple relaxing together. What happened to them should make someone feel unsettled and saddened and disgusted and angry.
And to end on some positives, the characters and acting is great. The cop and teacher are different from the usual protagonists who are quite agreeable and without much flaw. The teacher is very caring, shown by her dedication to the children and concern for the Child. However, she drinks, a bit too much, coerced the cop who was a recovering alcoholic to drink with her, which resulted in them fucking even though she knew he had a girlfriend. It's implied it's possible she was involved in an affair in her prior teaching job as well. The cop, cared to find the children, recovering alcoholic, so trying to better himself, friends with the teacher. Though, seems to hate his girlfriend and detest their attempts to conceive, which he should've voiced but this is besides the point, and again, he's a cop. The Father, reasonably angry and takes it out on the teacher, but comes around when he saves her from being killed by the weaponized principal. Point is, they're all very realistic people. We don't get a whole lot about every single one of them, but we don't need to get their whole back stories or whatever. We get enough to make them compelling characters within this story, and that's good. The movie also does sprinkle in some comedy here and there, and does it well and used it at just the right amount at the right times. Helps cut through the heaviness and definitely helps make the film more enjoyable. Also, good music, good lighting, go watch it xoxo
