Weapons: A Chronologically Disjointed Horror

It's been sometime since I've done any full assessment of a film, a critique or rating or otherwise. It is something that I have always wanted to return to, so I will attempt such a critical narrative analysis here, and. hopefully in the future as well. I've really been looking forward to doing a deep dive into Eddington which was my favorite film of 2025.

*SPOILER HEAVY*

If you want more of the analysis and not a plot breakdown skip down to ANALYSIS and THEME at the bottom.

Weapons: A Chronologically Disjointed Horror

The PLOT:

The first thing we are told, we are told through narration. We are given the facts as they are about the classroom worth of kids that walked out of their homes at the same time, and have yet to return home. The narration allows us to jump right into the meat of the story, it isn't concerned with recreating this event in full, and sidesteps using it as its opening Act. Other films may have chosen to open with the day in the life of the teacher, and then show the class empty and her world falling apart. Weapons ignores the convention, does not allow us to see the character of the teacher as we learn the facts of the story.

The film is divided into chapters essentially but these are denoted simply by a characters name over a black title card, essentially. Justine (Julia Garner) is our first POV character. We know nothing about her except that she is blamed for the missing kids. Her crass attitudes make it hard to sympthatize with her, and there can be some doubt cast on her from the attitudes of the parents; that maybe she is involved in some way. Her obsession with Alex, the only boy left in her class can be read as predatory, or protective. If she is behind the disappearance then she may want to tie up a loose end, if she's not, then maybe she actually cares. The plot eventually sheds the light that she does care. She sleeps with the married Paul (Alden Ehhrenreich) seemingly because she is into him, but it is mostly to get information that he can't give her. She sneaks up to Alex's house and sees the silhouette of people sitting stock still on the couch. Justine is accosted by Paul's wife for sleeping with him. Alex demands she leave him alone. Her story culminates in her hair getting cut off while she waits outside Alex's house where a female figure walks in sporadic movements and climbs into the backseat of her car. Justine is exonerated as a suspect for the viewer.

The next POV is one of the missing children's father, Archer (Josh Brolin) who we first meet sleeping in his son's bed. This quickly signals to us that we are fresh off the missing children, and that Archer is emotionally distraught. He reviews his ring camera's video meticulously and realizes at a job site that he ordered the wrong paint. A quick shot of the paint shows us that he was the one who painted on Justines car. He notices his son Matthew runs in a straight line from the house and given his knowledge of construction, and zoning he is able to map out a possible line that is precisely towards a notable landmark. He seeks out another missing child's house, and asks to see the ring cam video, but the wife refuses. Archer waits for the husband to come home and asks him more abrasively and the husband obliges. Archer uses the video to pinpoint the exact section of sidewalk the child ran straight from and returns to his map to pinpoint an intersection. A theory of where the kids are. On his way there, he spies Justine filling up her car at a gas station, and pulls it. Justine is defensive for good reason, because Archer has been her most abrasive accuser, but you get the impression that Archer knows Justine didn't have anything to do with it. But, the principle Marcus (Benedict Wong) comes running into frame from the foreground in the same odd manner as the children, and right at Justine attempting to kill her. Archer pulls Marcus off. Marcus eyes are wide open his face bloodied, and he seems zombified to get at Justine who runs inside the gas station while Archer is choked out by him.

Suddenly we cut to a POV of Paul. Reorienting ourselves back in time. We have just witnessed the most bizarre violent moment but the film denies us a conclusion to how it plays out and offers us an almost inconsequential sequence of events in Paul's life. He's on the phone with his wife who won't be back for a few days, or so she says. Paul tries to suck up to his boss, but he's pathetic at it. Paul is obviously deeply unfulfilled with his life and wants to move up in the ranks of the police department. He spies a vagrant breaking into a building and the thief runs away. Paul chases after him down the parallel streets and the energy is given the full weight of significant importance. As though Paul needs something to go right. He catches the man, and it's clear he's a junkie. He repeatedly asks the junkie if there's anything in his pockets, the junkie says no, because of course he does, but there is an exposed needle in his pocket and when Paul is poked in the finger he lashes out. Then, he realizes he's been filmed on his dash cam, his upward mobility likely destroyed or severely damaged. He threatens the junkie to leave. Later, Paul is warned by his chief that the footage can disappear but it'll be a month and that he needs to stay on good behavior. Paul ends up sleeping with Justine as we've seen, but surprise his wife is home early and he confesses to her right away. The next day the chief and Paul exchange a glance that Paul seems to translate as bad news, or at least a loss of faith. When he goes outside the junkie is approaching the station and Paul screams at him that he warned him. The junkie runs and Paul pursues.

We now jump into the junkie, James (Austin Abrams), a further removed character from all of the others. One identifiable to the others on the most distant of relationships, between a random police assault. This further disorients us from he main plot. The film is appearing to draw us further away from the kids, and likely is causing us some subconscious annoyance but also curiosity at how this will connect. This builds tension, but making us jump back in time again, but we do know this story will end with a chase. James follows a pretty stereotypical path, he's trying to steal things to pawn for money, and that is where Paul had interfered. After he wakes up from the strike to the face, Paul threatens him, and he agrees to not come around. But, he still needs his fix. He scours the neighorhood and finds house that looks empty and breaks in. We know this is Alex's house from before, James encounters the people on the couch, and is at first terrified but realizes they are not reaction to him. He discovers the children in the basement, but just finds it kind of peculiar. So, now the viewer is given the first answer to part of the mystery but it's through a character we don't know, and who has no motivation to turn the kids in. But now, this character is important just by the discovery. James basically shrugs the discovery off and steals silverware, the woman on the couch tries to catch him but he escapes. At the pawn shop he sees a reward for the discovery of the missing children. He pathetically tries to call the tip into the station, begging about the reward, and sounding suspect about the truth he has, but we know it's true. He walks to the police station, Pauls yells at him and gives chase. Now things are coming full circle. James sees a crazy woman in the woods that spooks him, it's the same image that Archer had seen in a nightmare earlier. He hides in his tent and thinks this scary woman is unzipping his tent, he collects multiple needles and lunges forward stabbing Paul in the cheek. Paul drags James out and aims his shotgun, and you aren't sure if he will just kill him, and the truth of where the kids are dies with him. This is a plausible move, but James uses the location of the kids as bargaining chip to live and get out, and Paul wants to climb the ladder of the police force so this case would help him do that. They go to the house, Paul goes inside leaving James in the back. He comes out hours later in the dark, and drags James screaming inside.

Now we go to Marcus' POV. He is shopping at the grocery store while having a phone conversation that we heard with Justine earlier. That they need to call CPS on Alex's house. He sends word to Alex's house that they need to have his parents come in. Instead of Alex's parents its the weird red wigged lady, her lipstick smudged in beyond her lips. She looks like a circus clown and is clearly the same person that Archer and James had seen. She claims to me Alex's Aunt Gladys. Marcus is clearly put off by her presence, sensing something about her but he is still cordial. He tells her the stakes that if he may need to call the authorities if the matter of Alex's parents isn't cleared up. The matter seems put to rest. Later, Marcus and his husband sit down over a nice spread to watch TV when Gladys arrives. She acts, poorly, as if she is in distress which Marcus clocks immediately but his husband buys, and invites her in. She asks for water, they offer her a glass, but then she says she needs a bowl. She cuts herself on the thorns of a stick, and Marcus notices his ribbon but then suddenly goes into a trance. She cuts of a strand of the husband's hair and wraps it around the stick and snaps it. Marcus immediately attacks his husband, bashing his face in with his skull. She then takes the strain we would recognize as Justines hair and breaks the stick in half again. Marcus runs out the door and straight to Justine. We have a montage of him running continuously, never blinking, his eyes seeming to almost burst out of his head with blood around them. He attacks Justine at the gas station.

Now we are caught up.

We now have all the pieces, the kids are in Alex's house, Gladys is some kind of witch. We know why she needed Justines hair, we can surmise why Paul was in a trance and dragged James out of the cop car. The last question is why is Alex normal still.

Before we can do that we have to see how the attack plays out. Justine is in the gas station, Marcus chases her through it, Archer intervenes repeatedly to stop him. Finally Justine gets to her car and drives away and Marcus gives chase on foot. Archer gets into his truck and pursues Marcus up the street, it feels like he means to run him down himself, but at an intersection another truck strikes Marcus from the side and shatters his skull on the pavement. Archer and Justine meet at the hospital patching up their injuries, and form an alliance. It is implied now that they are of one mind that Archer's coordinates and Justines knowledge of Alex's house will finally be confirmed to line up.

Now, we go to the POV of Alex (Cary Christopher) a kid who is bullied repeatedly at school, and who for a moment we think might be in on this mess for personal reasons. But he is a sensitive kid, he's quiet. We know that he's bright and super smart. Now we get the events that are cause to everything. Gladys is Alex's aunt, who is coming to stay with their family because she is sick. She's practically dying when Alex sees her and he instantly doesn't like having her there, and neither does her dad. Soon though his parents are seemingly frozen and Gladys is more mobile, more healthy. The parents are catatonic. At a certain point Gladys makes Alex's parents stab themselves with forks when Alex acts defiantly but of course he begs her to stop, and promise never to reveal anything about this home or his parents will get hurt. Alex promises. After awhile he wants them back to normal, and Gladys says that she can give them back but she need to get healthy again, and thought that his parents would do it. She tells him to bring personal belongs from all the kids at school. Alex scopes out the personal objects of the kids, but doesn't know how to do it without drawing suspicion. But he is super bright and notices the personalized labels everyone had mad for their cubbies. He sneaks away at recess and snags all of the labels, and is almost caught by Justine. Who looks out for him, and notices that something is off about him lately. This concern points to why she was even more curious about Alex's situation because she had noticed it earlier.

The critical point in Alex's POV is that he is smarter and more observant than the witch Gladys gives him credit for. She arrogantly does her magic in front of him, and he observes, his silence, like in school, taken as submission, and not an active mind. Eventually the story all comes together when he spies the cop Paul in his house in the same position as his parents. Gladys says they have to leave town now, and Alex has no intention of going with her.

Now the POV's all converge. We are caught up. Justine and Archer are outside being waved in by the possessed Paul, and Alex is inside watching the door to the witch's room where his zombified parents are standing guard, and a salt line is scattered across the floor, which he was told not to cross.

Justine crosses a salt line downstairs and Paul attacks her, and James, the junkie, attacks Archer. This is a rather humorous sequence because the junkie, though possessed is incredibly weak so Archer is able to beat him repeatedly but he just won't stop. Meanwhile Justine is being attacked by Paul, even going so far as using a vegetable peeler on his cheeks to stop him. Upstairs Alex crosses the line and retreats to his room as his parents try to kill him. As they burst through his door he goes around. This shows that the parents cannot think logically, they can only move in direct motion towards their victim, just as the kids ran in straight lines. This is important for the finale. He makes his way into the witch's room and snags two twigs, and Gladys' wig.

Downstairs the junkie knocks Archer onto the steps where he sees the kids but he can't get James off of him. Justine finally frees Pauls gun and shoots him twice. And then shoots Paul. Archer ventures downstairs looking for his son, but Gladys storms out of the shadows and snags Archer's necklace. Archer attacks Justine in a chokehold.

Gladys comes up to gloat.

But then, Alex wraps the hair around the sticks and snaps them. Gladys immediately knows what's about to happen and comically panics and runs out of the house. All of the kids stampede up, but Archer is still killing Justine. The kids comically chase a frantically panicking Gladys across the neighbors yards. They bust through windows like they are terminators in direct pursuit of her. They finally catch her and rip her to pieces. Comically tearing her jaw in two and ripping her face apart. Archer is let loose from the spell.

The film ends with narration, just as it began. Telling what happened to the characters. Alex's parents were under the spell too long and are fed soup by some home, and he now lives with a nice aunt. And some of the kids talked again. We aren't told if Archer's son was one of them and the film ends.

ANALYSIS:

The biggest interest for me with how Weapons is successful is that it centers narrative techniques of omitting information to cause tension to rise. There is gore and disturbing content for sure, placing it in the horror genre, but it doesn't focus on typical horror staples for most of its scares. It is based on the slow burn, the waiting and delaying of information.

As I alluded to in the plot summary, we are given the "facts of the case" in media rez as it were. The big event has already taken place. We follow Justine around and her abrasive personality signals us that maybe we should be suspicious of her, and causes the audience to go off balance momentarily. Eventually before her POV ends we are assured of her innocence.

We jump to Archer, his pain, the evidence of him painting Justine's car. At this point we might even be worried that he is going to hurt Justine who has just been exonerated in the plot. But Archer doesn't know that,  briefly Archer could be seen as a new antagonist with his paranoia. But, the characters in Weapons are not stupid, they are whole human beings, and Archer is an intelligent contractor who uses his specialty to break open the case, as it were. As he comes to his own conclusions of Justine's innocence and shows the audience that he and Justine are on the same trail. Of course, Marcus arrives to disrupt this flow.

Now the biggest disruption comes in the form of Paul and Jame's stories. Seemingly, and completely unrelated. We are primed not to like Paul because of the interactions with Justine. The tension that builds in the overarching plot is wondering when this will wrap back around to missing children, and it doesn't for awhile. But there is also tension of its own, Paul's assault of the junkie, his emotional distresses from the situation with his wife, and now his possible promotional collapse. His priorities are twisted. James' story pushes us even farther away, what could the junkie possibly tell us about the kids, which if we wait, we find out in the break in at Alex's house, and interior of the house that we only saw from afar with Justine.

At this point it's probably good to point out the distrust of everyone. No one trusts each other, and are volatile to one another. From teachers, to parents, to law enforcement, and then on the fringe of society the junkie. There is a disconnect between people. This could be read as a higher commentary on the state of America right now. Think of how much the plot would resolve if people just talked to one another, and knew their neighbors. But modern American society people barely even talk to their neighbors.

After witnessing images of Gladys in Archer and James' POVs, we finally meet her in Marcus'. Marcus clocks Gladys has strange immediately but has the administrative personality to hold it back and remain civil. He realizes Glady's use of the word consumption is weird, since that's an old timey term. This flusters Gladys slightly, but she leaves. It's unfortunately Marcus' non administrative husband who invites Gladys inside.

(curious here the overlap of the myth of witch and vampire. They both use familiars, in this film Alex s Gladys' familiar to do the outside work to help her survive, and she is "invited" in. That may be more symbolic than truly a rule her, but she does seem to feed off the people she possesses to keep her youthful, not dissimilar to a vampire.)

Marcus' tragic sequence allows us to truly know we are dealing with supernatural forces. The horror sequence of him bashing in his husband's head shows that he has lost all control, and also confirms Archer's theory of the running straight line that the kids did since Marcus does the same thing.

(I won't get into the thematic or symbolic nature of a gay couple being forced to kill one of their own, or being victims, there's probably something there, but I haven't thought that deeply).

With Alex's POV now that we have all the distinct and separate pieces of the puzzle, we now get to bring them altogether. This also serves to show the fully formed character that Alex is, we get to see his life before, his life after. As I said the bullying almost signals that Alex might be in league, but we quickly discover his helping the witch is a means to an end to save his parents.We know that he's super smart, we see that Justine is a good teacher because she recognizes Alex's shift in personality, even though he is a quiet child in general. Most importantly Alex is attentive, he pays attention, and this is how the witch underestimates him, and does her magic in front of him, and teaches him inadvertently how to do it.

The villain undone by her own hubris is classic and cathartic. When we know how Alex will win, we are allowed to relax and cheer the demise of the monster, to the point of being almost comical.

My disorienting us in the timeline of the narrative we get feel the emotional weight and lives of multiple characters, connecting us closer to the people on screen, we have to keep switching our empathy by the nature of the people that we are following.

THEMES

What is the title supposed to mean.

We can look at literal weapons as a possiblity. The weapons of public shaming in the form of what's done to Justine, the weapon of vandalism. People wield bottles as weapons. The junkie James uses needles both intentionally and unintentionally as weapons. Paul uses his authority as a copy as a weapon, but also uses his fists, and shotgun. Justine uses Paul's gun, but also a vegetable peeler as a weapon. Gladys makes Alex's parents use forks as weapons against themselves. And of course Gladys makes Marcus into a weapon against his own husband, and Justine. The kids ultimately are used as a weapon by Alex to kill Gladys. It could be argued that Justine uses sex as a form of violence to get information from Paul, since she clearly doesn't care about him after she learns he knows nothing about the investigation. Oh and bullying is a weapon against Alex.

Gladys orchestrates this mess from the shadows. She terrorizes the town, and has it turning against one another. I don't think it's an accident that Justine is a school teacher, given the condition of public education in the United States and the already heightened distrust.

The division of communities is a weapon that Gladys exposes. No one trusts each other. Justine doesn't trust the police, the community doesn't trust Justine. Marcus looks out for her from this violence, but he ultimately suffers for it.

I think one of the clearest areas is the use of the child as a weapon. Gladys uses Alex as her personal tool, as a weapon. She underestimates him, because she thinks he is just her little puppet to manipulate. Children overall are used as weapons in ideological arguments, and are shaped into and hurt by the powers that be in this power struggle.

What does the ending say then, perhaps to be careful how you manipulate children to turn to violence because that violence can be used against you. Gladys is an old being, we don't know how old, but she doesn't know how to function in modern society. but just like the past, it shapes the future, some unknown ideological idea that bleeds through time, and shapes the generations to come who didn't have a say in how their minds are being manipulated. Maybe that's the ultimate point, that future generations don't have to keep being the weapons of the powerful and the ideological monsters of the past.