If you saw “Weapons” when it was released in August, you know that Zach Cregger’s second feature film ends with an absolutely ridiculous (and frankly hilarious) chase sequence. It turns out that the star of that sequence, Amy Madigan — who deserves an Oscar for her turn as the film’s antagonist, Gladys — insisted on doing as many of the stunts involved in that sequence as possible.
Madigan — who, as of this writing, is a respectable 75 years old — told Entertainment Weekly’s “The Awardist” podcast that she ended up preparing a lot for the climax of “Weapons,” where Gladys is chased and then torn apart by 17 schoolchildren she was holding captive for the purpose of power theft. (I’ll get to all that in a second; don’t worry.) “Being told you’re going to be torn apart is one thing. Actually framing it and filming it and doing it…” Madigan admitted before saying she went to great lengths to befriend the child actors and help them feel comfortable around her so they could give their all on stage. “But it really started with that whole running sequence, which I really had a lot of fun doing,” she continued.
Cregger apparently didn’t want her leading lady sprinting across the lawns screaming while the kids are hot on her heels, but Madigan stood her ground. “’Oh, no, I’m running,’” Madigan apparently told Cregger. “‘I definitely run. I do.’ So all this, just increasing the gain, I thought. It was great. It’s like, yeah, you just have to tear it apart.” In a separate interview, Cregger confirmed that this is precisely how things played out.
Zach Cregger said elsewhere that Amy Madigan absolutely insisted on doing her own run in Weapons.
In a separate interview with IndieWire, Zach Cregger discussed the challenges of filming the entire chase sequence, noting that it took about three days and that they didn’t even get as many takes as he hoped, due to the fast pace of production on “Weapons.” Let’s discuss all of these shots in action, including the one where Amy Madigan’s Gladys runs through strangers’ homes, followed by the horde of children that Cregger says he shot five different times. “It really was Amy [Madigan] for all of that,” he clarified. “It was really Amy who was running it.”
According to Cregger, he hired a stuntwoman, as any director would, but Madigan took umbrage. “We had a stuntwoman there, and when Amy saw the stuntwoman in her outfit, she was like, ‘What is she doing here?'” Cregger, naturally, said he didn’t want one of his stars to risk her safety: “And I told her, ‘Amy, if you fall, we’re going to have a real problem. I need you for the rest of the movie, so I’m going to make her race.’ And she said to me, ‘No, you’re not making her run.'”
In the end, Madigan succeeded; as Cregger says, “Amy ran the whole thing.” There is, apparently, a plan that involves this stuntwoman. “The only thing that’s not Amy is when she gets dumped because we liked a change in Texas,” Cregger revealed. “Amy runs towards the door, and as we follow the girl out the window, the stuntwoman runs into the yard, so the girl tackles the stuntwoman. But it’s only a moment.” Now let’s talk about this incredibly frantic, strangely funny and fascinating scene.
Here’s how Gladys meets her brutal, bloody end in Weapons – and why
This is how we even get to the point where Gladys is completely screwed over by a group of third graders. At the beginning of “Weapons”, we tell in voiceover that one night, at 2:17 a.m., 17 children flee their home and run in a very particular way towards a common and unknown point before disappearing. Gladys had cast a spell using a strange tree she carried to summon the children; essentially, she used a branch from the tree, paired it with possessions belonging to her targets, sacrificed her own blood to the branch, and then broke it, transforming her targets into armed beings. The kids then hang out in the basement of the Lily house, where their only non-possessed classmate, Alex (Cary Christopher), whose family home Gladys invaded to cast evil spells on him, along with her possessed parents, resides.
Alex eventually figures out Gladys’s magic trick and does it against her, sending all 17 children after her and filling them with bloodlust. In this IndieWire article, Zach Cregger noted that this scene was also done using practical effects…and the kids I loved it. As he revealed:
“Even Gladys is torn apart. I think her eyes are blinking while her face is torn apart, and it’s VFX, but everything else is like… we had a mannequin with pipes inside, and the kids took the mannequin apart and got fake blood sprayed on them. They were having the time of their lives.”
It’s a fitting end for such a delightful yet evil character, and Amy Madigan agrees. “I think some people find it funny,” she told “The Awardist.” “Some people say, ‘I don’t know that ending.’ Some people think justice has prevailed, so that’s good.”
“Weapons” is now streaming on HBO Max.
