Weapons director reveals Gladys had her own chapter in the film – here’s why it got cut

Weapons is honestly the horror film of the year and everyone knows it. Critics, random movie goers – everyone is truly wowing. And with good reason. It’s a film that manages to be terrifying and hilarious, and its unconventional structure sees director Zach Cregger follow suit from his previous film Barbarian in which the time jumps back and reveals more plot with chapters specific to characters in the movie. Like Barbarian, Weapons has dedicated chapters to characters like Justine, Archer, Alex and others – but the one major character who didn’t get her own chapter is villainous Aunt Gladys. But why? Well, now director Zach Cregger explains that Gladys did have her own chapter in Weapons but that he cut it for this key reason.

The cut Gladys chapter in Weapons may never be seen

Aunt Gladys is instantly one of the most iconic and mysterious characters in Weapons. She wasn’t seen in any promotional material for the film, and this was all intentional. Amy Madigan gives a horrifying performance as Gladys, who is a parasitic witch behind the manipulation of the population of Maybrook – particularly Alex’s parents and the 17 kids who go missing from Justine Gandy’s class. She uses dark magic to turn these people into her weapons and her life source. This much we know.

Amy Madigan as Gladys

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But we don’t know much about Gladys beyond the fact she’s claiming to be the aunt of Alex’s mother – although she can’t really recall knowing her. We don’t know how much Gladys has been doing this and if she’s been sustaining her life for a long time or if this is a last ditch attempt to survive. This is all stuff we could have got in a Gladys chapter, but the Weapons director Zach Cregger explains why we never saw this lore.

“In an earlier draft of the script I had given her her own chapter,” Cregger told io9 of his decision to keep Gladys a total mystery. “It was a little bit of an origin before she came to town. But I realized that it was just giving too much away. It’s more compelling to not know some of these things. So I ended up cutting it very early on in the writing process.”

“For [Gladys], I kind of had an idea of what was going on with her,” he said. “And I talked with Amy [Madigan] about that somewhat, but I also want to respect Amy’s process. And I want her to take ownership, and I want her to kind of create her own mythology. So I gave her a couple of options of what I think might be going on. And then I kind of didn’t ask her too many questions about where she landed with it.”

Sometimes the scariest part is truly the unknown.

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