The cast of Weapons explain the meaning behind the film’s harrowing ending

It does not make for light viewing


None of the new horror film Weapons is cheerful, but the finale is especially harrowing. Thankfully, the director and an actor from Weapons have explained the deeper meaning behind the shocking ending.

A strange woman called Gladys and her magic tree are to blame for the children disappearing. Really. She shut all the kids up in a basement. Gladys is keeping the children and the parents of a boy called Alex in a kind of lethargic trance. The parents don’t really interact with the world around them, apart from when Gladys forces them to hurt themselves, to pressure Alex into acting normal at school. In the grand finale, the children take back control and kill Gladys.

On paper, this sounds really, really bizarre. But the director and writer of Weapons, Zach Cregger, has explained why the solution to the film’s mystery is so weird. Apparently, this ending is an allegory for addiction. Gladys is the equivalent of alcohol or drugs. Zach Cregger told Vanity Fair: “This foreign substance comes in and it changes everyone’s behaviour. The house becomes a scary place. You can go to school and act like everything’s cool, and then you come home and you hide from a zombie parent. That felt so real to me.”

weapons film

This film’s not exactly an easy watch

Zach Cregger was inspired by his own childhood. He explained: “You live with an alcoholic parent, and there’s this inversion of the dynamic. The child can become the [caregiver].”

So, when the children rise up and destroy Gladys, they’re taking over the role of the parents who’ve failed them. Get it?

During the ending of Weapons, Gladys hypnotises a homeless man called James to do her bidding. Austin Abrams, who plays James, says he pitied his character’s fate because of the parallels to people who struggle with addiction in real life. He explained to the Hollywood Reporter: “Being addicted to drugs is hell. It’s a nightmare. When I see someone on the street that is in a psychosis or something like that, that could be me, that could be you, that could genuinely be anyone. It just depends on what situation you grew up in, to a big degree.

“There’s babies that are being raised by meth addicts. I don’t know what’s going to happen to them, but that’s a hard hand to be dealt. So I feel complete empathy for James.”

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