As we finally be taught, it’s the clown-faced new hag on the town who has tempted the kids from their houses because of a spell that she enacted with Alex’s assist. After making Alex’s close to comatose mother and father stab themselves within the faces with forks as a type of nefarious emotional blackmail, Alex provides his aunt with private belongings from every of his classmates, making them inclined to bewitchment. It’s Gladys who has management of those so-called weapons, and she will set them on any locals just by wrapping a strand of the meant sufferer’s hair round a twig and snapping it in half. It’s the sort of reveal that may be simply as becoming in a Grimm’s fairytale as it’s on the massive display screen in 2025.
So About That Ending…
As Ms. Gandy and her sudden ally—native livid man, aka bereaved dad Archer (Josh Brolin)—attempt to put collectively the items of the unusual thriller that has enveloped their city and stolen their kids, Alex is making an attempt to take down the girl who has taken his associates hostage and made his as soon as protected and heat household residence right into a tomb for his hypnotized mother and father and classmates.
It’s Alex that finally manages to defeat Gladys, wrapping a bit of her hair round considered one of her twigs and snapping it, setting the kids on their one time captor. In one of many movie’s most stunning and brutal moments, the kids run by means of partitions, home windows, and doorways to get to Gladys, showcasing simply how highly effective her magic is, as she makes an attempt to flee. Sadly (or… happily?) she’s quickly being torn aside and eaten alive by the youngsters that she was as soon as controlling. There’s a catharsis to the ending as the youngsters get their revenge, nevertheless it’s very clear that this isn’t a cheerful ending. As a substitute we be taught by means of the identical voiceover that launched the movie that a number of the kids by no means spoke once more, and others took a yr to verbalize. It’s implied that Alex’s mother and father, in the meantime, by no means recovered in any respect. It’s a trauma that can persist with each the kids and the city so long as they dwell, and never solely due to the folks Gladys killed, but additionally as a result of the kids finally needed to kill Gladys themselves to be saved.
Does Weapons Join With Barbarian?
Whereas narratively it might look like there are not any apparent connections between Barbarian and Weapons, a viral marketing campaign to advertise Cregger’s new movie begs to vary. The web site Maybrook Information options intriguing details about the kids from Weapons and their stunning disappearance. However most curiously for this explicit query, it additionally options an article titled “Underground Jail Found in Rental House” with a picture of Barbarian’s unforgettable remaining lady Tess trying down into the basement of horrors.
In accordance with the article “a rental property in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood has change into the main target of a chilling investigation after a neighborhood girl escaped the house underneath stunning circumstances and an actor was discovered lifeless close by.” That’ll sound acquainted to anybody who has seen Cregger’s stunning breakout horror hit, which centered on documentarian Tess discovering the nightmarish truths beneath the rental residence that she’s unexpectedly sharing for an evening.
So with an in-universe web site acknowledging that each films exist in the identical world, and moreover the identical Midwest, this author has a thematic idea thought to share. After watching Weapons, I used to be blown away by the truth that Cregger appeared to be revealing a by no means earlier than seen map of North America. On his map, a generally supernatural however at all times unsettling reality lies beneath the floor of the nation that we expect we dwell in. That is an America the place witches emerge within the suburbs with the intention solely to hurt the weak and harmless; the place males kidnap and torture girls creating folkloric monsters out of the unforgivably grotesque and terrible sins they’ve dedicated upon them; it’s a brand new horror geography of America with Cregger as its writer.
