Weapons

I don’t think I’ve talked about shows or movies before but today I recently finished Weapons which was a movie I had been interested in but only watched today. Admittedly a big part of that is that I knew the director was involved in WKUK which was a show with skits that I had liked a lot in the past haha. Is there something about comedy skit actors/writers becoming horror film directors?

Anyways, I had gone in with 0 understanding of what the movie was really about other than vaguely that the plot was about kids leaving mysteriously in the middle of the night. I knew it was also supposed to be a horror film and while it’s a bit past Halloween surely this counts as me watching a scary film for that.

Now I am a self proclaimed scaredy cat. I’m terrible with things scary and tend to get really anxious over things that jump at you which makes me horrible at horror games (though I did finish silent hill with some friends watching me). Horror movies I’m only slightly better at because at the very least I don’t have to personally do anything. So when I say that I’m able to watch this movie without being scared, that’s to say that I don’t think it’s that scary. But I will admit I had to cover my ears at times because I’m scared of loud noises, so take that as you will.

That’s all to say that while Weapons is sort of marketed as a horror thriller, I don’t think that should be the main focus. I actually found that a lot of the themes Weapons explores to be more interesting than the horror elements, which I guess is kind of the impetus for why I decided to make a blog post about the movie in the first place lol.

Before that though I do want to say there were quite a few scenes in Weapons that I actually found… comical in a dark humor sort of way. I think those who’ve seen the movie will know what I’m talking about.

But regardless, I think the interesting parts of the movie relate to the themes around addiction as well as… hm I don’t know a good singular word to sum it up but I guess about protecting children? It feels like a fitting story to take place in America given a lot of events that occur in America. Spoilers inbound

Perhaps I’m a bit of sucker for stories involving kids in difficult situations, but I felt that Alex really was given the short end of the stick throughout the entire movie, whether it be being bullied in class or being forced to take care of his essentially hypnotized parents.

The most telling part of it is how little anyone is really able to help him. Even at the end of the movie, despite Justine and Archer being there, he’s really the one who gets himself out of his own situation. The police weren’t able to help, the school wasn’t able to help, he was essentially forced to confront his own abusers and ‘break’ that spell.

I think there’s a lot to be said about how adults (Justine is who I think of in this particular movie) like to think they’re helping or trying to help, but ultimately are unable to do anything. It could be because they’re selfish/thinking of themselves (Marcus), or because they’re restricted by other powers (Justine with the school rules). The police (Paul) we see are also ultimately interested in their own benefit, and Justine even calls Paul out on it with regards to the case with the missing kids. I’m sure Paul was glad to ‘help’, but I think it’s equally as likely he’s just glad to find something to shift the focus away from his police brutality.

Also, I don’t know how intentional this is but it really does feel like the police are quite useless lol. There’s so much to be said about how poor their investigation is that it’s almost comical that Gladys wasn’t caught earlier. I don’t take this as a nock against the movie, but rather I contribute it as part to the incompetency of the police in general portrayed in the film.

The addiction themes I’ll confess I was only really able to see with the help of looking at other people’s interpretations of the movie. I think viewing it through the lens of how everyone has their own addiction they’re fighting/coping with makes some scenes particularly interesting, Marcus being one of them. I didn’t make the connection his addiction was junk food until someone pointed that out lol.

There is also themes related to parasitism, and that imo ties in with the addiction/abuser themes. The scenes where the ant fungus is on television or in the class they’re talking about tapeworms stand out.

Overall, the film was surprisingly deeper than I expected it to be. For those reasons alone I think the film was really good. As a horror film, it’s not really scary, but as a film overall, I liked it.

Oh, one last thing that I thought about the ending. A lot of interpretations online seemed to speculate that the curse was still in effect after Gladys’ death because of how much life force she’s drained. I think this ties into themes surrounding kids’ trauma and how they live it with long after the abuse happens, part of me (from a non thematic perspective) wonders if it has anything to do with Alex being the one to cast almost a “new” spell. At least in regards to the children still being affected. There are holes with that since some kids recover but something I was thinking about lol.