Why this twist falls flat

The “weapons” of Zach Cregger are, to date, one of the most acclaimed films of 2025. It has a 96% note on Rotten Tomatoes, on 214 reviews and counting. This means that only a handful of criticisms saw the Cregger film and did not give it their approval cachet.

I am part of the handle.

It doesn’t make me special. It doesn’t do me well or badly. It just means that I did not care about the film, no matter how much I can admire her different pieces. As a professional critic, it is my responsibility to be honest about my opinion – anything, whether someone agree or not – and explain how I got there. Without an explanation, it is not a criticism, it is just an opinion. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course, but I am not allowed to stop there. Entering the Nitty-Gritty is my job. And since you read one of the professions right now, let’s talk about it.

My criticism of “weapons” was, in the interest of not spoiling the film before the release, written with my hands attached behind my back. The reason why I did not care about “weapons” is easy to explain, but the convenience demanded that I close hell on this subject. To explain why I did not like the film, I had to discuss the intrigue of “weapons” in detail, until the end, and I engage with the resolution of the many mysteries of the film. And it would be a great “no”.

It would be good criticism, of course, but it would “spoil” the film. A “spoiler”, just to make sure that we are all on the same wavelength, is information which, if they were revealed, would theoretically ruin the impact of the work of art. What matters as a “spoiler” has always been a question of debate. I clearly remember having seen “Blade Runner 2049” and that I was told, flat, what the studio considered a “spoiler”. The first scene of the film was on the list. How do I devil are we supposed to write on a film when we can’t write about the film? Remember “Caddo Lake?” Of course, no, because we were not allowed to speak of “Caddo Lake”. The film premise has been declared prohibited.

But sometimes the definition of a “spoiler” is quite obvious. In the case of a film built around a mystery, “the solution to the mystery” qualifies as spoiler by any reasonable standard.

So here, now that the film has been released in the world, is my full review of Spoiler of “Weapons”.

Spoiler alert: we are going to talk about the end of “weapons”.

“Weapons”, to make us anchored again, speaks of a group of children, of the same primary school class, which all disappears, in the middle of the night, at the same time. They just got out of the bed and ran out, never to be seen again. Or at least we think.

Zach Cregger’s film explores the consequences of this apparently inexplicable tragedy in several ways, but one of the focal points is Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), the teacher whose students have disappeared. The whole city thinks it is responsible, so they hunt it on the left and right. They even write “witch” in giant letters on his car.

Zach Cregger is not very subtle: it is a witch hunt, which means that Justine is unjustly accused. After all, this is how the witches’ hunts worked. (“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller did not concern a group of people who were enough Accused.) When tragedy arrives at a community, people are looking for a way to give meaning to all this, and too often, it means finding someone to blame, even if they do not deserve it. And historically, they often don’t do it.

Justine Gandy doesn’t do it, that’s for sure. She is a good teacher who cares about her students, perhaps a fault. And although it may seem independent, she also expresses her own sexual agency by seducing her ex-friendly friend. It makes people hate her more. This city does not like women like Justine Gandy.

For half of the film, “weapons” depicts witch hunts like very bad things, which is a reasonable vision of the subject. This is why it collapses a little when it turns out that the city dwellers only hunted the bad witch.

I don’t want to say that in a metaphorical sense. The culprit is a literal witch: Gladys, played by Amy Madigan. She is not only diabolical, she is physically monstrous. “Weapons” displays his aging body, wrinkled and apparently attached to cancer as if it were a terrifying shock. As if nothing could be more scary than [checks notes] An elderly woman. Adding the insult to this injury, when Gladys gets riding to go out, she wears a red clownesque wig and an exaggerated makeup. I guess nothing could be more frightening than a woman conventionally unattractive either.

The demonization of femininity is aggravated if we consider the previous Cregger horror film, “Barbarian”. (The spoilers for “barbaric” entering, by the way.) The literal monster of “barbarian” turned out to be the mother, a badly trained and mistreated woman, whose film of the Cregger body was also considered horrible, in this case a source of rough fear. In the exciting views of “barbaric” and “weapons”, these women suffer from brutal and violent death, and although Gladys seems more evil than the mother, and perhaps perhaps a terrible end, the brutality of her disappearance suggests that we are supposed to take a twisted pleasure in watching her body mutilate. This after having evoked the history of witch tests, which persecuted women, leading to their public executions.

I can’t find it satisfactory. I find it immature and simplistic, and he certainly has sexist connotations, at least. “Weapons” evokes many terrifying and unfortunately familiar notions, including school shots and child abuse, but in the end, it comes down to a literal witch. We are led to think that it is a film on important subjects, only to discover halfway that it is a monster story, although told in a remarkable way.

As I said in my non -spoiler review, pieces of “weapons” are phenomenal. I only have praise for performance, cinematography, music and publishing. But it’s not a whole film. You can bring John Williams to mark a film which is only a long time that the man taking a dumping ground, but it is always a scat film and at one point, you will have to count with that, no matter how epic the score is. Roger Ebert argued that this is not what a film is, it’s like that. But it is always to be done something And if something does not work, it’s just a game to criticize it.

There are other elements in the “weapons” that almost reduce this problem, but during the exam, they do not seem to work either. You could say that the witch is a metaphor for an abusive parent, and yes, without a joke, that’s exactly what she is. But how does it connect with the rest of the class? “Weapons” shows that Alex (Cary Christopher), the nephew of Gladys, after looking at Gladys torturing his parents, helps him take off his comrades. This film evokes the horrors of a school shoot, and without Alex, this tragedy could not have been possible, which suggests that Alex is the analog of the school shooter. But don’t worry, it turns out that witches were really to blame? Question mark?

I am not convinced. Even if Congger maintains that we should be more attentive to children who show signs of being mistreated – a message on which we can (hope) all of them agree – transform this horrible experience into a direct monster film, after having treated the message more seriously for half of the film, undermines this theme. There do not seem to be many bad parents in “weapons”, at least not before their children disappear. It is an intruder that is to blame, and again, I am not convinced that it is as significant as this film thinks.

“Weapons” demonizes the other, and in this case, the other is unattractive elderly women, which, I suppose, is supposed to panic us. As if none of us knew of the elderly. And although there is a lot of excitement at the end of “weapons”, including a ridiculously disappearance above this intertwined woman, the fact that all this accumulation led, essentially, to Zach Cregger pointing and shouting “Wiiiiitch! I did not work for myself as much as it seemed practically everyone.