SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses all major plot developments, including the ending, in “Weapons,” currently playing in theaters.
Zach Cregger’s new horror film “Weapons” has been released, and the marketing for the movie is centered upon a mystery printed on the poster: “Last night, at 2:17 am, every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark … and they never came back.”
Too scared to go see the movie, but curious to find out what happened? Read on for a breakdown of the plot.
The film starts right away with the central mystery, and the increasingly desperate parents in the town are convinced that Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) knows something about why every middle school student — besides a young boy named Alex (Cary Christopher) — from her class disappeared and where they went.
As the search hits the one-month mark and school goes back into session, the film splinters into short segments following several people impacted by the disappearances:
*Justine is haunted by the real and imagined threats from parents who feel like she knows answers. She also hooks up with her police officer ex-boyfriend, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich).
*Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son Matthew disappeared, is one of the parents harassing Justine, but he is also doing his own investigation into the disappearance because he doesn’t think the cops have done enough.
*Prompted by a concerned Justine, the school’s principal, Andrew (Benedict Wong), tries to do a welfare check with Alex’s parents, but is only met by his creepy Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan).
At this point, the mystery of the plot starts to unravel. A sick Aunt Gladys has come to town to stay with Alex and his parents, and she is a powerful witch. She first uses her spells — which largely consist of prickly sticks, blood, locks of hair, a bowl of water and a bell — to render Alex’s parents mute and motionless in the house, and she appears to be feeding off of their energy and getting healthier.
Gladys then convinces Alex to get a personal item from each of his classmates, and he steals their hand-drawn nametags from their school cubbies. This allows Gladys to do a spell and have the kids all run to Alex’s family house in the middle of the night and hide in the basement, with Gladys seeming to refuel her battery on them as well.
But the plan starts to fall apart once Gladys starts using her other major witch power, which is to make a person under her spell brainwashed so that their only mission is to find someone and kill them — effectively weaponizing them, ergo the title. While Archer is confronting Justine at a gas station, a brainwashed Andrew comes running up to Justine, trying to choke and bash her head in. Archer intercepts him several times so that Justine can get away, and Andrew is killed as he’s running down the street and gets hit by a speeding car.
This convinces Justine and Archer to create a truce, and they figure out that by triangulating the angles the kids all left from on a map, their paths all lead to Alex’s house.
As they arrive, they are attacked by a brainwashed Paul and Anthony, a drug addict Paul has been tangling with for much of the movie. Justine and Archer eventually overpower and kill the pair, all while Alex is trying to hide from his parents, who are brainwashed into trying to kill him.
Archer heads to the basement where the kids are being held and accidentally runs into Gladys, who makes him go after Justine. Although it looks like Justine will be choked to death and Alex will be ripped apart by his parents, Alex quickly makes a new spell so that his classmates are all brainwashed into trying to kill Gladys. This causes the witch to flee the house, chased by 17 children hell-bent on killing her, and they soon overtake her, ripping her head and limbs apart. As she dies, the other spells are broken, and Archer and Alex’s parents snap back to normal.
As the film ends, we’re told through narration that Alex’s parents were sent to be institutionalized and he now lives with a nice aunt, and the kids were all returned home after escaping the basement — and some of them even started talking again this year, a tough final line which shows the effect all of the spells had on people.
