#weapons 2025

[buggledy]

Weapons (2025)

[ohmovie]

Weapons (2025) dir. Zach Cregger

[saposters]

Weapons (2025)

[happybirthdaydarling]

Something about how tragedy brings communities together but only superficially, a scapegoat is needed (particularly a woman), how the inherent trust of familial bonds can lead to abuse, a child who is clearly being groomed and neglected being ignored by the community who oh so suddenly is claiming to care about the children can lead to more tragedy, and a lack of communication even in a world filled with surveillance allows awful things to occur

[babybluebanshee]

I keep seeing the take that Weapons is about a school shooting and having just seen it last night, I don’t get that vibe at all. Like, to me, the themes of children being an oppressed class - the narcissism of the older generation not viewing children as living, thinking, feeling human beings but as either props for them to use when they’re fighting a pointless battle or as tools to enrich themselves somehow - and how that hurts everyone in a community in the long term is far more prevalent. The children are taken from their homes, in full view of their parents’ security cameras, and still no one was alerted. Rather than come together as a community and try to work together to find their children, the parents seem to isolate, to the point where the mother Archer approaches doesn’t seem to recognize him. The angry parents, Archer especially, all focus their rage on Justine even though the evidence against her is incredibly flimsy, simply because she is one of the only factors that ties them together and she is an easy target - she’s not a parent, she can’t TRULY care about the children, not like their FAMILIES do. Meanwhile, Archer didn’t realize until it was far, far too late that his emotional distance from Matthew was turning the kid into a horrible little shit. None of the parents or even the police ever gave even a thought to Alex - the OTHER thing that ties all the missing children together - who suffered for months IN HIS OWN HOME. Justine has to point out that the paths the children took as they left didn’t intersect at the radio tower, but at the Lilly home, because the thought never even crossed Archer’s mind. The danger was never the outside threat of the school, it was in a single family home on a quiet suburban street. But because Alex is a child, and not their child, the other parents pay exactly zero attention to him in the grand scheme of things, even though it should have been obvious to multiple people that something was seriously WRONG in Alex’s life. And this isn’t even bringing Gladys into things, when she herself is basically the personification of an abusive and/or neglectful home life. The police, the other parents, the school - they failed Alex miserably because they didn’t view him as a person, but as window dressing for their own grief.

[cha0ticr0b0tic]

Random observations about Weapons (2025):

-Loved the use of "Beware of Darkness" by George Harrison as all the kids are running into the night, it gave the scene a very ethereal feeling instead of being outright scary. Eerie, I think, is more the vibe.

-Was definitely picking up some school shooting parallels, especially with the "Maybrook Strong" imagery and just the whole premise of a small community reeling from an unexplainable tragedy.

-As a teacher myself, I really did feel for Justine being made into the town scapegoat. I was kinda expecting the principal to be an irritating obstacle for not just her but the narrative, but no, he was a perfectly reasonable and kind guy doing his best to handle an out-of-control situation. Justine DID have issues with boundaries – like, sorry, but she should have known it's not appropriate to drive a kid home from school.

-Archer Graff not being able to tell his kid he loves him is really saying a lot about a certain kind of American masculinity, isn't it.

-Lmao Paul really nepo-babied his way into his job didn't he. The cops are frequently useless in horror movies, especially when there's supernatural characters involved, but there were lots of choices bro could have made differently.

-Zach Cregger loves him a creepy ass basement and a weird ass old lady villain, lol.

-I always love a scene of detective work; I loved the score playing while Archer got to work with his blueprints and camera footage. I wouldn't consider him and Justine friends, but when they came together to put their respective pieces of the puzzle together, mmmm so good!!

-I thought James was an interesting character to give a segment of the narrative to because at first glance he wasn't directly involved with the case. He's a good vehicle for comedy and him just kinda bumbling into the answer made for a fun reveal.

-The tonal shift in Barbarian about half an hour in or so was REALLY jarring to me and was a large part of why I didn't care for it. Here, we go from suburban thriller to suburban fairytale, but there were just enough bits and pieces of the latter scattered around the former (the hair clipping, etc) that I didn't feel as taken aback.

-Children are an oppressed class. The can opener moment oh my god *cries*

-Not Archer decking James AGAIN and AGAIN I was dying laughing. And the scene with Gladys and all the kids lmaooooo the comedy was peak XD

-Justin Long?? What are you doing here??

[crobones]

the synchronous AUDIBLE GASPS in the theatre when that car door opened oml

[ohmovie]

It's just, like, fucked-up.

Austin Abrams as James Weapons│2025