Weapons (2025) — "This is a true story. It happened right here in my town two years ago."

This is a true story. One night, seventeen kids walked outside and they never came back. That's where are you. A lot of people dying this story, a lot of really weird place. This is where the story really starts.

Weapons ready, dar, Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I am your host, Chris Tashu, And yes, this is another solo episode, just me here talking about movies, or at least a movie more specifically. On this episode, I'll be talking about one movie that's kind of been resonating with me more recently in positive and negative ways. But I wanted to talk about something first to lead into that that's a little bit more kind of broadly, and then we can talk about it a little bit more specifically about this movie, which I think is indicative of things recently, so in the last couple of years, and it's you know, it's been a while since this has been the case. It's been I guess probably twenty fourteen was something like It follows, and you know, even something like The Witch, which came out a year later.

We have what is being called and you know, which I think a lot of people myself included talk about with elevated horror or horror being used to mean something, and you know, again, we as fans of horror. If you're listening to this show, I'm assuming you're a fan of horror, and if you're not, I understand why you might not be. But I actually think that these movies, for as much as I have an issue with them from time to time as kind of being a little uh, what's the term unsubtle some of these have, They're about as subtle as a jackhammer to the fucking forehead. Some of these movies. I mean again, you know, something like the Babaduke, which I'm not personally a fan of.

I know that there are plenty of people, especially I'm sure people that are listening to this that are screaming into their headphones, going the Baba Duke is a great movie, Chris, you just don't understand and it's just not for me. I know that it's a good movie. It's just not for me. It's not something that I personally resonate with. But I can also understand why other people might resonate with it.

I don't have kids, I don't have any aspirations to have kids, and so I think maybe the Bobaduk would resonate with me more if I were a parent, and especially if I were a parent of a special needs child, because I think the Bobbaduk, at least if memory serves that was kind of the main point of that movie, is that the kid in that movie is or at least coded as special needs. Again, I've only seen that movie once. It's not something I really wanted to revisit. And I think that that's the other thing about these these movies that are horror as X or you know, processing grief through the use of horror, or alcoholism or in something like It Follows, you know STDs, you know, sexually transmitted infections, I guess is probably what they're called now, you know, using using horror movies as a vehicle for those things is interesting.

And I am a huge fan of processing emotions and externally utilizing art to process emotions in a healthy and cathartic way. And you know, in my mind, anyways, with something like The Witch or It Follows or I mean again, maybe something again. I don't know how unsubtle people want to go with something like this, but with something like The Menu even or The Lighthouse or Hereditary or Midsummer like all of those movies have something in common. That thing in common being the idea that there is something that the movie has a vested interest in getting the audience to understand. Be it.

You know, the creature in the movie, and it follows as an STI and you know it's operating the way sexually transmitted diseases do. And so you know, you have this woman being followed by the STI the entire movie, you know, as if it's herpies or aids or something to that effect. And again, like they they thankfully in that movie, they never say, they just kind of again allude to, you know, this is how it's transmitted. And so therefore, you know we're going to have it be an external manifestation of STIs and sexually transmitted diseases and being ostracized for those things. I mean, maybe not literally, but sometimes you know, figuratively or metaphorically.

And I really, you know, I don't have an issue with it. I think the issue that I have with it is when it starts to be the same message being regurgitated over and over again without anything interesting or novel in its delivery. I know I'll probably take some flak for this as well. With something like Skin Them a Rink, which I really enjoyed. I actually was one of the first things I bought in a physical media format when I kind of started rebuying physical media thanks to friend of the podcast and frequent collaborated Ryan Verel of Disconnected and the Physical Media Collector.

Like I like Skinem a Rink because that's a movie that talks about child abuse and child neglect without really again beating you over the head with it. I think the problem most people had with that movie was less the message of the movie and more that the movie was just kind of esoteric in the way that it delivered the message. And you know, again, it's more of an art house movie. It's a small budget thing. It was, you know, made by one guy, and you know that that's it, Like it's you know, it's a very small scale project compared to something to even like The Witch, which you know, again that is Robert Egger's first film, but it had a budget of four million dollars Skin a Marink I don't even remember what the budget of Skinner Marink is.

But the budget of Skinn Marink is not four million dollars. There's no way the budget of Skinn a Marink is four million dollars. The budget of Skinner Rink was fifteen thousand dollars, so you know that's a significantly smaller amount. But again, like they're still trafficking in the same thing. They're both going out of their way to confront a certain message or idea or topic using the vehicle.

That is a horror movie. And again, you know, the diminishing returns of it all, I think is the problem for me ultimately, and the diminishing returns of it all is when someone does again the grief monster in a horror movie. Once again, just as a grief monster, you get something like the Boogeyman, which is a perfectly fine adaptation of a Stephen King movie, but it's rather pedestrian in what it's doing, you know, like, oh, you know, it's grief. Grief is a monster. Mental health is a monster.

Like and I'm not saying I have an issue with it, you know, as someone who struggles with their own mental health, as someone who you know, went to get you know, diagnosed this year and went and got a PsychEval done and now is in therapy every week. And you know, my therapist said, hey, by the way, you know most people don't, and by most people, she'd never heard of someone going and getting psychevaled on their own volition. Most people do that because of a court order or because someone else says you need to go get it done. I got to that point on my own. I knew something was wrong.

I knew something was not okay, and I knew I needed to go and do something about it. And that takes a lot, And you know, I wish I could say the same for everyone else. And if you're listening to this and you have mental health issues and you have insurance, you can probably talk to your doctor and say, hey, I don't think something is okay if we can't do something with medication, which medication doesn't work for all of us. I know that because I took medication that caused me to have sexual impotency issues. It curbed my libido completely.

It made me feel less than myself, which it's not something that someone who makes content for a living should be feeling, because not feeling yourself means you're probably not going to be honest with your audience or honest with yourself. And I think the best content comes from being yourself and being honest and being at least as honest as you feel comfortable being. I mean again, you know, I'm not saying I'm pulling punches here, but sometimes you have to speak a little bit more circularly than you can specifically because again people, you know, people's feelings are involved, mine included. So but you know, if you're struggling with mental health, and if you're struggling with not feeling okay on a daily basis, it's okay to go to your doctor or whoever you know, again, like you see for health issues and saying hey, I need to be referred to someone to do a little bit more about this.

There's nothing wrong with that because again, you know, not everybody has the outlet of art, and that's the thing that you know, someone like Robert Eggers or Zach Krieger or Ari Astor or oh my god, so many of these directors right now, I mean, even Danie ville Neuve, Like Danievilleneuve is I mean again, like you know, he has directed Dune, but he also directed Enemy, which again, like he also directed Prisoners, which is kind of a horror I mean, it's maybe not a horror movie, but again, like you know, it has you know, Weapons, the movie that I'll be talking about more specifically as this episode goes on. I think Weapons and Prisoners would be a very good, a very intense at least in Prisoners spec double feature, because it's about the loss of children and in a lot of ways, the loss of innocence in places where innocence doesn't necessarily need to be lost, especially with children in yeah, I mean children in such a young age that you know, it's I mean, look, children disappearing is always going to be bad.

But these are children from an elementary third grade class, so they're children under the age of ten, I you know, and that's you know, God, it's you know, it's bad enough when it's one kid, but when they're seventeen children disappearing from one class, you know that that takes I think precedent over pretty much anything else, you know. I think what's funny is obviously with something like Weapons, Weapons is a little more fantastical in the presentation of the world that we're in, you know, in a lot of ways, I feel like Weapons almost doesn't exist in reality. Weapons exist in a heightened reality. I think Barbarian a movie that I resonate with a lot less than Weapons, I think also existed in that heightened reality.

And I think for me when I was watching Barbarian that didn't work for me in Barbarian because in Barbarian it felt like the movie would have worked better if it had been grounded further in reality and the kind of fantastical nature of Oh, there's spoilers for that movie, and there will be spoilers for Weapons as well. From this point on. There's tunnels underneath this building and oh my god, it's all underneath this, and there's Richard Brake and the like. It's it's just those fantastical elements didn't really jibe with the environment above ground as it were. Those elements didn't work together.

And in Weapons there is that same nature of kind of the concealed truth that is lying just beneath the suburbia. And and you know, in Barbarian it's it's the decayed, this the dystopian suburbia, and weapons it's the suburbia of blue velvet. I mean, there's there's something very Lynchian in Weapons, And you know, I'm not saying it's David Lynch in tone, but David Lynch was always interested in the world outside and the world beneath being incongruent with one another. And you know, Blue Velvet, when Kyle McLaughlin finds that ear in the front yard, I mean, that's a I mean, you know, in suburbia, the last thing you would ever expect to find is a disembodied ear in your front yard. And in Weapons, you know, we have the Austin Abrams character, the homeless drug addict and thief, who spends most of the movie out of sorts, showing us what happens when your entire life is taken over by addiction and every single moment is spent looking out for yourself because society is, you know, again seemingly not looking out for you.

And in this country, we have a really bad track record with taking care of people that are struggling with mental health, and we have an even harder time taking care of people that are struggling with addiction because so many people can't even acknowledge that addiction is a disease and that it needs to be you know, treated, and that there are ways to help people with addiction and they don't need to be ostracized from society. And you know that there are some people that you know, sometimes the addiction is just so overwhelming and so all encompassing that you know, sometimes there is seemingly no way out, and you know those people need more help, and those people do need to be focused on more because there are people that don't struggle from addiction at all, and congratulations, I'm not saying I do, but I struggle for mental health issues, which you know are are crippling in their own right.

And so the thing that's interesting about something like weapons is similarly to blue velvet, similar lead to barbarian, but I think it works better in weapons is we see the undercurrent of the world that is seemingly on the up and ups and everything is perfect on the outside, but just below the surface we have we have the alden ahnright character, who is kind of the personification of that. I mean, you know, he has the perfect how seemingly with How did this get Made's June Dian Rayfield, which I can't stand seeing her in anything she is, look though, how did this get made? Of it? Aside which I'm not a super big fan of because again, just laughing, joking numbnuts about movies for an hour and just not adding anything to the conversation other than tearing down other people's work for your own self benefit is fine, and you know, I mean again, there's a need and want for that in the world of podcasting, and we have a good time here at weirding Way Media.

But I'm not really interested in tearing other people's work down because I think it's funny. We can make jokes, and there are bad movies out there, objectively bad movies that deserve to be poked fun at and asked, how the fuck did this get made? It's a good question. It's a worthy name for a podcast. I just don't think they ever actually answer the question.

I think it's just about trafficking in their notoriety and fame because all they're three celebrities who have a podcast, and that's why people are going to listen to it, because they're comedians and they have a leg up congratulations. I'm not a fan of her. I'm not a fan of her in this movie. I you know, her scenes with al Dinner are fine. I like him a lot.

He's like one of the best parts of that Han Solo movie, if not the best part of that Han Solo movie, a movie that is not I don't know. People have kind of forgotten that it happened, and you know that's probably the pre pandemic of it all, but also the who really needed it and who really cares of it all? I you know, in retrospect, it's a lot more interesting and exciting than those three sequel films ended up being. And look, did we need a Han Solo movie? No?

Did we need a Han Solo movie that answers the question of how did Hans Solo get his last name? No? Did we need to see Amelia Clark in the Han Solo universe doing Han Solo things? You know, Alden Aaron Reich and her in that Star Wars movie, like they have zero chemistry together, but man Alden Aaron Reich and Julia Garner, the little bit of time that they're on screen together, which is like three scenes and weapons, the two of them have really great chemistry. I would love to see them in something else together where they're given a little bit more time to play off of one another, because the two of them is great.

You can actually completely understand why he would be so drawn to her because the energy that she has is you know, she's one of the principal characters in the film. It's her and Josh Brolin and Alden, Aaron Reik and then Austin Abrams, and then at the end of the movie we get Kerry Christopher's Alex. But it's again like that's that's maybe my one kind of bigger issue with this movie is the long legs of it all. And we'll get to that when we get to them in terms of like criticism of the movie, or at least, you know, like critiquing of the movie less talking about the message and the issues that the movie's talking about. But I like the chemistry that Julia Garner has with everybody.

I think Julia Garner is one of the best actresses working right now. I mean, from Ozarks to The Silver Surfer and Fantastic Four to this to I mean a lot of stuff, a lot of things I haven't seen admittedly, Like I know she was in The Americans, I know she was in Dirty John. You know, she was anasoricin and inventing Anna, which I know again is kind of the thing that put her on the map for a lot of people, especially pandemic wise, and the kind of accent that she was doing in that is is kind of I guess it's become kind of a meme unto itself. But I haven't seen Ozark, and this movie kind of would put me in the camp of going out of my way to watch. It's solely based on her performance and ability to act.

And again, like, she's such a good actress, and it's almost unfair because there's so many actors working right now who are just so naturalistic, and she's one of them, Like she just it feels effortless the way she she makes acting look. And I think that those are the people that inherently are the ones that are the most gifted, are the ones who when you watch them act, it doesn't feel like you put on You can see everything that the actor is trying to get across from the script on their face, and they add so much by just their sheer physicality alone and their presence on screen and so many like of the shots in the middle part of the movie, especially during the Justine Gandy parts of the movie where it's her narrative, are like close up shots of her and her reacting to things and just giving just you know Justine or you know Julia Garner more specifically, the ability to react and is she a scream queen?

I you know know, I don't think so. I mean, you have to be in more than one horror movie to do that. And look, I'm not I'm not not a fan of Wolfman. I think Wolfman is a movie that you know, it came out earlier this year. I watched it.

It's not terrible. I think there are some interesting ideas there. Obviously, you know, essentially doing Wolfman as the Wolfman but the fly, which is what that movie is, which I mean again I found to be an interesting premise. I'm not sure how well x acut it. It is that movie is also about generational trauma because the father in the movie, uh is the one turning into the wolf, and his dad turned into the wolf.

But his dad was a strage from his family because his dad was a were wolf. It's werewolf ism or likenthroat be for you know, dead beat parenting, I guess. And you know, in weapons, we don't get dead beat parents and weapons. We get helicopter parents and weapons. We get justifiably pissed parents and weapons.

And that's where the Josh Brolin of it all comes in. Josh Brolin, who I love in everything I've ever seen him in. He is one of my favorite actors. He has an intensity to him that I really appreciate. And I think that his intensity again similarly to Julia Garner, like he doesn't it doesn't feel like a put on.

And then when you see him in interviews on you know, like Colbert or I mean anything really any sort of kind of just Josh Brolin being Josh Brolin, I think that he really shines as an actor because he you know, and as a personality even because he just seems, I don't know, he seems able to be serious but also not take himself seriously, which you know, as someone who has been in things like No Country for Old Men. But then also I think has played one of you know, the great villains of all time with Fanos in a Marvel movie, I think, and he's like the quintessential Marvel villain at this point. And you know, Josh Brolin has so many roles at this point that you could say like, well, that's the role or that's the role.

I mean, for some people, it will never be anything more than the Goonies, for fuck's sake. And again I'm not even I'm not a Goonies guy by any stretch of the imagination. Like I saw The Goonies way later in life. I you know, it's not a movie I grew up on. But again, The Goonies, similarly to Weapons, is a movie about heightened reality and broad stereotypes being painted and those stereotypes existing as characters.

We have the alcoholic, you know, put upon teacher who's being accused of being a witch. We have the dad who wants his son back. We have the other parents in the town who are just you know, stricken with fear and grief, like Justin Long and Sarah Paxton showing up for a cup of coffee. We have you know, the gay principle and his husband or who you know are so empathetic to the Amy Madigan character, who you know is obviously there's something clearly up. But hey, you know what, like we're gonna be the good people that we are to the end, and we're gonna be punished in a horror movie for being good people, which you know, does it suck?

Sure? And I think it actually ups the ante of of Benedict Wong's character. But yeah, you know, Benedict Quean and Clayton Ferris playing you know, the the the the stereotypical gay couple again like nothing wrong with it, just like they're written so specifically that again, like it does feel like a fairy tale, almost like a modern day fairy tale. And I like that about this movie. I mean, I like that it feels like a modern day fairy tale.

It feels very much like in the r aster of it all I mean hereditary and especially I mean, if you watch the director's cut of Midsummer, that movie is hardcore a fairy tale. I mean they show the entire movie at the beginning of the movie in a fairy tale presentation, with the kind of imagery and artwork of a fairy tale, because it shows the entire story in picture book form. And then there's a part in that movie where we're kind of having this panning shot of the camera over these giant cloth kind of tapestries of the story of how one of the characters entraps the other character to fall in love with them. Like that, that movie is about the stories that we tell and the stories that are being told, and the way we mythologize things.

And you know, sometimes you know, you know, a person just sometimes it's a person being forced to jump off a cliff, and sometimes a person is jumping off the cliff of their own volition, and one of those answers is a little bit more romantic than the other. Even if it's a little more even if it's just as horrifying, there is a little bit of romanticism to the idea of well, I'm gonna turn seventy two and I'm gonna jump off of a cliff. He know. Again, like I'm not agreeing with it, but Midsummer's kind of trafficking in the fairy tale nature of you know, kind of the narrative it's presenting. I think Weapons does the same thing.

Maybe not as like obviously, but you know, you do have that opening framing device of the child narrator talking about you know, if you come to our town, you'll, you know, and you ask the people who actually know, they'll tell you what happened. But if you were to ask the official you know, this was the official story, nobody knows, and you know, like I like that framing device. You know. I know that the original version of the movie didn't have ending narration, which I think would have been interesting. But I think to be fair, if you're gonna put opening narration in the movie, you should probably put outro narration just to kind of wrap the movie up in one little, tight and eat bow.

And again it gives you the opportunity to do something that the movie wouldn't necessarily allow you to do otherwise, which is contextualize what you're seeing externally, because most of, if not all, of the story that we're seeing is being told from character, like the entire narrative, and the benefit of the narrative is the way that it's told, which is in a very non linear fashion. I mean, we pingpong around from character to character to character to character to character, and there's nothing wrong with that, but because of the way you tell the narrative, and because of the very narrow focus that each level of the narrative is given, we are intentionally not given all the information ahead of time.

And for me, I I appreciate that storytelling device, but I do feel like there is a little less of the gimmick of the movie will wear off in repeat viewings because it has already worn off for me and repeat viewings as it is, because the fairy tale of it, like, there's there's some parts of the movie where I'm like, I don't I don't think that this is you know, works in any other way other than this like fairy tale aspect. And that's how I kind of have to convince myself of parts of this movie working better than others, because in something like Barbarian that doesn't have that laser focused tone, because it's able to meander a little bit more because it's being told in a more narratively straightforward linear fashion.

This movie doesn't have that, And because it doesn't have that, it is a little bit more obduse with what it's doing. But it does require at the end of the movie the kind of once the once we have the key put into the lock, that we discover, Okay, this is you know, this is the this is this is the dodge here, this is the this is what we're all waiting for the reveal. What's the reveal? How do we how has the trick been pulled over? You know our eyes?

What is the wool here? What is going on? It feels a little bit like Long Legs and I wasn't necessarily a fan of it, and Long Legs and I'm not necessarily a fan of it here where we just have the entire movie recontextualized in one ten minute scene and in this movie, it does the same things his long legs like in the in the in the end of the second act, beginning of the third act. In this movie, it's an extended third act about you know, thirty minutes with Alex's story. We learn why Alex has been the way he's been, and what's been going on and why he didn't disappear and who is this you know, redheaded woman.

We've been seeing the whole movie, like, you know, you know, some of that's answered early on when we see Marcus going after you know, Justine, when we see Bennetictuane going after Julia Garner's character, and we understand that's what's going on, and you know, she's you know, but we don't understand who she is really and what her deal is. Really. We can guess, we can make leaps, but in the third act of the movie, they pretty much just lay it all out, and again, it just there's got to be a better way to do it. Maybe not, and maybe it doesn't bother anybody, and maybe it's you know, the how, how done it? Who done it?

How catch him of it all? And it's like, well, you know, maybe did you figure it out? Along with the movie, or you know, are you behind and is the movie going to reveal something to you that you didn't realize? Like, again, that's kind of what it feels like. I'm not a huge fan of just laying it all out.

And you know, there are subtle scenes in this movie, like a shot of the back of Josh Brolin's pickup truck with the paint making it clear that he's the one who painted which on the side of Julia Garner's car, Like there are subtle ties in this movie that the movie knows it can do. You know, they keep mentioning parasites on the TVs over and over again. I mean, at some point that feels a little more unsubtle than it does subtle. But you know, those kinds of things in the movie work for me better than just going and we'll just lay it all out and have one character just regurgitate essentially what the director's point is or the kind of who, what, where, when and why and now we'll let it go. I'm just not a big fan of it because it grinds the momentum and the tone of the movie to a halt.

And I actually, again I vibe with the tone of this movie a lot, because again, it does feel like elevated fairy tale story to tell, and at least the way that these kinds of movies can. The tone of this movie feels very heightened, just like the Goonies, I mean the Goonies and the Goonies. The kids run into a monster, you know, sloth underground like that, you know again, like that, that's a heightened reality, always gonna go live with them forever, oh, you know. And then again in this movie, at the end of the movie, we have the kids being returned to their families, but you know, some of them don't have the ability to speak. Again, some of them do, and you know, the kid's parents at the end of the movie, Alex's parents, they're put in an institution.

And it's just kind of like, all right, sure, like that, there's no stakes to that, there's no there's no I don't know, like there's no stakes to it because it doesn't need to have steaks. It just needs to be a fairy tale. And that's the thing about this movie that's hard for me to kind of wrap my head around in the third act is if it's a fairy tale. Fairy tales aren't about over explaining things. Fairy tales are about a message being kind of conveyed to the audience, and I think in a lot of ways, Zach Kreeger should have trusted his audience just a little bit more and maybe broken the Alex narrative into smaller bits throughout the movie and not just weighed it down at the end of the movie where we have to have everything explained now, Like having Amy Madigan flashed on screen throughout the movie, I think was good enough, Like I don't don't need everything explained for me, and I like Amy Madigan a lot in this movie.

I just think in a lot of ways, like her and Alex back and forth is just like exposition exposition, exposition, exposition, back and forth and back and forth. It's like, I'm not here for this because this isn't what I vibed with the movie. I vibed with the tone of this movie a lot. I vibed with the fact that we have parents looking for kids, and the parents are stricken with grief to the point of not being able to, you know, with with Josh Brolin, he's unable to do anything else. And I like the idea of, you know, the third act of this movie, Zach Kreeger has said, is very autobiographical because he had alcoholic parents, and you know, that's an addiction, and it's an addictive quality that makes you an alcoholic.

And in Josh Brolin's case, he's addicted to grief. He's addicted to the hunt and the search for his son. And you see that throughout his whole narrative. We see him sleeping in his son's bed, We see him essentially not going to work. We see him sitting in front of his computer looking at these videos of the kids running into the distance with their arms kind of askew.

Like all Josh Brolin does the entire movie is look for his son. He is singular focused and narrow minded in cause. And I think for me, that really works in the movie because we get the addiction narrative at the end of the movie with Alex's parents and you know him feeding his parents, you know, hating to take care of them. But we also get to watch Josh Brolin, who was clearly the breadwinner for his family, not taking care of himself and what that means for his relationship and his house sold him not taking care of himself because he is only focusing on where his son is, which again is understandable given that his son disappeared, and the longer it takes after someone disappears to find them or to find the lead, the less likelihood that they're alive.

I mean, that's the other thing. You know, obviously unrealistic that these kids would even be alive at this point, but you know, again, it is a movie, and nothing wrong with movies trying to be a little less realistic. But yeah, I mean, this movie is about witches ultimately at the end of the day, and not only is it about witches, but it's about how witches weaponize and are weaponized again by either you know, again, if we look at something like Salem, which the idea of someone being a witch was a tool that was used to weaponize society against people, to then use that which witch or being a witch as an excuse to you know, take people's land away and murder them and have them burned at the stake or stoned to death, and that's the weaponization of people against one another.

But then in this movie, you know, the title of Weapons is about the idea that this woman Glad is the aunt of Alex, though it's never actually confirmed that she's his aunt or anything of relation. We just get the sense that, oh, well, there's this woman. Like again, we don't know if her powers are so far reaching that she could have convinced these people externally of who she is and weaseled her way in. I mean again, she is again, if the movie's narrative is to be believed, she is a parasite. So the idea that this woman comes into this town and takes over with such ease, and takes over this household and causes such a you know, such a problem and such a nightmare for this town, and then in the process of utilizing a child as a weapon against his own classmates, because she asks, Alex, you know, if you don't help me get pieces of each of your schoolmates or hair or personal effects.

If you don't get me something, I'm gonna let you. I'm gonna kill your parents. I'm gonna let your parents eat each other. Because she's essentially a parasite. She's a flatworm, she's a tapeworm.

She's draining his parents to stay alive. Because we get the sense that Gladys is hundreds of years old, at least I would assume, I mean again, you know, the movie does a good job of subtly getting us to these points. The movie doesn't need to explain everything, and again I think some of this is just you know, Zach Kreeger having to make changes based on studio notes. I mean, again, the ending being a little bit more subtle than it is now with narration, with no narration before and narration now. You know, again I enjoyed the narration because it does fit the circular kind of storytelling, you know, someone telling a story, opening it and then you know, the cutting back out of the story at the end, back to the just of the narration.

It does work for me. But also it again over explains everything, and I appreciate again the David Lynch of it all not explaining everything because I as as an audience member, I'm engaged. I am genuinely directly engaged with the movie, and the movie does not need to worry about me not being engaged. But I also understand that, you know, there is a possibility that not everybody's going to be engaged, and that might be the problem, that could be an issue, and if you want to make sure people are engaged, you maybe need to drip feed them a little bit more and a little less esoteric would be a lot more helpful for mainstream audiences. And look, this movie thirty eight million dollar budget box office two hundred and sixty million.

That's a lot of money. It's a success, one of the biggest successes of this year. Horror movies are. I mean, horror is broken through from being just a genre that has been looked down on by the kind of cognizante of Hollywood because all people just get their start and horror and it's one peg above porn. Like, no, it's not one fucking peg above horror in a lot of ways, and at least in my opinion, I think horror is the genre that still has the longest legs because it allows you to either subtly or unsubtly, directly or indirectly address things that other movies can't do in as entertaining a way as horror.

Now, look, maybe you know a marriage story isn't necessarily going to have You know, a movie that talks about divorce that isn't a marriage story may not have as much legs to it as a marriage story in terms of getting the message across. But a horror movie about divorce and a falling apart marriage would probably be a little bit more entertaining at least, or maybe a little bit more fun, I think, because that's the thing about weapons, you know, at the center of it, Weapons is about seventeen children disappearing in this country where people seem to not care about children at all because we allow things like weapons to you know, weapons, the actual thing. And as a gun owner, I have a mixed feelings about a lot of this because you know, I am a responsible gun owner, like most gun owners are, because again, you know, most people don't.

You know, it's always a smaller percentage of people ruining it for the greater percentage of people, obviously, And as a responsible gun owner of a weapon, as this movie so clearly points out, you know, people in this country fane. You know, they do performative theater about grief. And you know, the thing about Josh Brolin's character in this movie is it's not remotely performative at all, like you get because he's all consumed by the grief. But you know, there's performative grief in this country because we don't seem to care about children dying in school shootings when weapons are used, and again kids in this movie are being turned into weapons. Normally weapons are being used on kids in these school shootings, that's the thing.

Weapons are being used by sometimes adults, sometimes other kids on other kids. And you know, again the weaponization of Alex by Gladys so that he can hurt his classmates so that she doesn't hurt his family is you know, again like it's chilling, it's haunting. But again it does cut back to the idea of what is the theme of the movie, what is the point of the movie? And the point of the movie is you know, trauma comes from all direction, and you know, we can either have trauma put upon us by other people, like again, Gladys doing to all the parents in this town, taking their children away from them in the middle of the night. And again, if not for the fact that Josh Brolin and Julia Garner are able to figure out what's going on, because even the cops are so a nep they can't figure it out.

Uh, if not for the fact that they figure it out, these parents would still be without children. You know, Gladys puts trauma on these parents that would have never gone away. And then you know, you have the self trauma of again the addiction angle with the Alden Ehrenreich character and the Austin Abrams character of you know, a ex alcoholic and a current drug addict, and what does that mean for you know, what does that mean for them? And how you know, are they more susceptible to being weaponized because of the kind of inherent kind of vulnerability of who they are just by their addiction. And you know, it would seem that while the movie doesn't necessarily outright or you know, in you know, like explicitly say that, you know, it is kind of interesting to note who is weaponized in this movie easily.

And the people that are easily weaponized in this movie are the the cop who's an ex alcoholic and the drug addict who's homeless. They seem to be the ones that were easily weaponized, while you know, everyone else kind of she had to work a lot harder, Like Gladys had to work a lot harder for Alex's parents than she did for James and Paul. She had to work a lot harder for Marcus. You know, she had to really weasele her way, you know, like a like a vampire into their house. Uh, And man, the scene, the scene with Marcus and his husband and Gladys.

You know again, it's it's the most uncomfortable scene in the movie where he is headbutting his husband to death. It's not great, it's hard to watch. I would say, it's the talk to Me scene of this movie, you know, the scene and talk to Me where they're they're performing the seance and and the younger brother gets in on it like that that scene in that movie. That's this. That's this scene in this movie, Marcus headbutting his husband to death and then continuing to go further and further and further and further and further.

Is it's a lot and you know, again, this is still a horror movie, but it you know, there is a little bit of comedy to it. And I do think that it's intentional that they give these characters these absurd kind of like popped out eyeballs. I mean, we've seen influencers on TikTok and YouTube who can kind of pop their eyes out of their sockets and they do it to you know, comedic effect, and in this movie it is it's it's gross and it's weird, but it is comedic because watching Benedict Wong run down the street with his arms at his side, with his eyes popped out, you know, kind of with his kind of rictut grin. It is funny to see, like it is also horrifying, but it's kind of like it's darkly comedic. And that's the thing, Like Zach Kreeger's tone in these movies is comedic in nature.

I mean, he's you know, obviously this movie and he's talked about it a lot. You know, this movie was in a lot of ways him processing the passing of Trevor Moore, who is one of the founding members of The Whitest Kids, you know, who Zach Kreeger was also a part of. So, you know, Catharsis comes in a lot of ways, and for zach Kreeger came externally in the form of weapons. And you know, he talks about the third act being autobiographical with the alcoholism of it all, but I think, you know, less autobiographical and more just kind of broadly speaking to the idea of when something takes hold in your life, be it addiction, be it external forces that you can't get out from under, which again could be addiction, could be a lot of things.

It almost is all encompassing, and it takes over your life entirely, and it starts to poison and become parasitic in your life, and it starts to draw away healthy, positive thoughts and notions away, and it takes over and everything becomes toxic. I mean when you look at something like Alden Ahrenrex's character. So he arrests Austin Abrams for trying to break into his job. He then, after getting stuck by a needle, punches Austin Abrams and then lets him go. And again, you know where we are at this point.

His body cam caught all of this, so he tells him, look, you stuck me with a needle by accident, I punched you. You know, neither of these things are okay, And obviously one is worse than the other because he's a police officer. But again, you can kind of get yourself mentally to that point of you know, I've inflicted trauma on you, You've inflicted trauma on me. Let's just kind of call it good and walk away. They get to that point and then Austin Abrams is trying to Austin sensibly do the right thing and let someone you know in the police.

Know, hey, this is where the kids are. I've seen the kids. These kids are in this basement. I'm you know, he wants the reward money, and god knows what he'll do with it. He'll probably just you know, again, like the character written rather sympathetically, he might go and use it on drugs, or he might go and get his act together.

You would hope the latter, but it will probably be the former. He's ostensibly trying to do the right thing and alden Ehrenreich kind of takes the wrong approach and doesn't listen to it because he thinks that he's trying to come back to the police station to report him for beating him up for you know, police violence and negligence, and that's not what he was doing. He was just trying to cash in on finding the you know, the reward for finding the kids. And so, you know, because alden ehn Reich is you know again like he's is a recovering he's a recovering addict, which you know again, like it would seem that his ability to process things and his ability to be emotionally aware and you know, emotionally well balanced again, like it doesn't.

The movie doesn't make a statement on how addiction factors into that. But Alden Aaron Reich is just he's a loose cannon, I mean, and again like addiction or not, like it seems that the addiction feeds into it, Like he makes one bad decision, then makes another bad decision, and then he goes out with Julia Garner making some more bad decisions, which seemingly like by the time the movie ends and he is shot dead by Julia Garner, like you know, it's because of a bunch of bad decisions that he kept making over and over and over again, trauma over and over and over again being inflicted upon him, either externally or on his again, on his own, like he does a lot of it to himself. He can't control himself enough to not punch Austin Abrams.

He can't control himself enough to not go out with Julia Garner, like there are ways to as a police officer, make sure you are not you know, like you don't get AIDS or HIV, like getting pricked from a needle like again, like you know, like again, like he he obviously is has every right to be upset, but he inflicts trauma on Austin Abrams and that makes things worse in the process on himself. Like, there's so much of this movie that is just trauma being inflicted upon yourself by others and trauma that you inflict upon others yourself. And you know, I think it is time to talk about Gladys because again, like the third act of the movie does really focus on her character. So Amy Madigan plays a witch in this movie, and Gladys as a witch uses other people's life force to drain them and or use them as weapons through kind of taking a piece of their like hair or belongings and then wrapping it around a branch and then breaking the branch and then that turning them into a weapon.

And either you know, you know, she can control them, either to bring them to her or to send them to do her bidding. And she is obviously a malevolent force in the movie in a way that you know, again you don't see in a lot of cinema. I mean, she is a very villainous character because she kills children and she's draining these children of their life force, and you know that is you know, again, inherently, the most evil thing you can do is anything that would be child focused, your child centric, and using seventeen children as essentially batteries to drain your to drain their life force for yourself is pretty intense, and I like the way she's written. I wish that there was again, less of an explanation of what exactly she's doing.

I mean there's I mean there's less explanation than I'm probably leading on, But I don't need as much as they gave, because again, like so much of it could have been conveyed with context clues and just the visual language of filmmaking. I don't need everything explained. But again, like I there are these scenes throughout the movie before we kind of understand who she is, where we see her, you know, in the background or in a dream sequence, and she has this wig, this really haunting like red Wig, and she's dressed completely anachronistically to the time that this movie is taking place. The other thing about this movie, it's never really made clear when this movie is taking place. It feels timeless, and so that timelessness makes it feel like a fairy tale, because the best fairy tales have a timeless quality to them that aren't focused on a specific time and place in year, and this movie feels that way.

It doesn't feel like it takes place in a specific time and place. It just kind of takes place in any town in America is kind of the way it feels. And this town, you know, is small town America at least is the way it's painted. But the idea that the tenets of small town America are so fragile, and that the framework of small town America is so kind of fragile in the nature of the foundation of it is really interesting because I'm not sure I disagree with the sentiment of the world of the nuclear family and small town America being very kind of tenuous at best. But at the same time, I do live in small town America, and there does seem to be that undercurrent in small town America of kind of passive aggressive talk, and there is some of that in this movie.

I mean, the Alden ahn Wright character is unable to be honest with his wife, and in not being honest with his wife about the things that he clearly like needs or wants, he is you know, able to go and be with Julia Garner and be an alcoholic and make bad decisions, and you know, Erode the nuclear family that he and his wife have together. And what's interesting is, you know, again, in any movie without a supernatural character, we would just have parents and you know, cops and people in positions of power having their mental kind of faculties eroded by the grief and trauma and stress of being in this scenario. But in this movie, it's like, no, there's actually a supernatural explanation. This isn't the Atlanta child murders.

This is a witch in small town America. And I like that about this movie because again, like it doesn't trivialize the nature of the actual grief and trauma surrounding these things happening in the real world, but it does allow us to go, okay, the stakes are a little less than a man walking into an elementary school and gunning down children. There is a witch in this movie. There is a supernatural explanation, and that supernatural explanation may also have a supernatural kind of solution, a way to fix the problem. And there is a way to fix the problem.

We see at the end of the movie. The Gladys character really gets her come upance, and she gets her come upance in a way that, like, you know, I haven't seen in a horror movie in a very long time, Like she gets ripped apart, limb by limb, she gets her top jaw ripped off by children, Like for what she inflicted upon these children, these children inflict upon her in tenfold And it's wild and it's really it reminds me of Colonel Rhodes from Day of the Dead, Like it's very much like joke got it, Like bah help me, Like there's something so visceral about being ripped apart by your bare hands, especially when it's like children, which is even more intense. But you know the amount of trauma and that she inflicted upon them for the rest of their lives, because that's the other thing.

When some of those kids come back at the end of the movie, some of them aren't able to talk anymore, and you wonder if that's because you know, like a battery, were those the first you know, were those kids the first ones to make it to the house, which means they were the first ones to be drained by Gladys, which means you know, there's less of their mental faculties left. That would be my explanation, at least head cannon wise, because you know, when you look at what happened to Alex's parents, they're institutionalized. By the end of the movie, they were the ones who were being drained the longest of anyone other than those kids. So I would wager that that's the way the logic of the movie works.

And you know, again we don't understand you know, if someone like Benedict Guang had survived, would he have been continue to be drained probably or even someone like you know, Alden Ehrenreich or Austin Abrams, like if those characters hadn't been used for kind of nefarious purposes, you know, so that Gladys could kind of have lackeys under her control, you know, further weapons at her disposal, would you know, would she have drained them completely? And would they have you know, been used as batteries as well? Like when when you're a parasite like Gladys, you don't see people as people. You see people as objects. You see people as means to an end.

You see people as a tool for you to use for your own benefit. I mean, Gladys is a you know, case you know, positive proof positive. She is a very good case study of a narcissist. I mean that's the way narcissists treat people. Narcissists treat people as how can how how can you do something for me?

What can you do for me? How can you benefit me? What is what? What is there to be stood to be gained from me and you being friends or in a relation, And that for me is again, you know, the trauma in the lives that we live is you know, there are people that are alcoholics that inflict trauma on us. There are people that are narcissists that inflict trauma on us.

If you are a narcissist, you're probably inflicting trauma on yourself or the people in your life. Like again, like trauma comes from a lot of places, both externally and internally. And I like that. You know, Zach Krieger with this movie has said, you know, I'm not going to sit here and allow myself to sit in my trauma and grief without a way to process it. And I like that in making Weapons, he's able to externally process his grief of the passing of his friend, and you know, by also getting to externally process some of the grief from his childhood.

I mean again, he's talked about the third act of the film being deeply autobiographical, and the third act of the movie is the most intense act in terms of like watching Alex's parents stab themselves in the face with forks, the children ripping the parents, you know, the parent, the you know gladys, they're kind of you know, like which mother you know, fairy godmother or witch godmother. As we're apart at the end of the movie, you know her getting her come up, and it's like that all takes place in the third act. You know, Alden aren Reich and Austin Abrams getting shot and killed. That takes place in the third act. Like, the third act is intense, but the third act also, I think, is you know a lot of again, if you want to talk about processing external trauma, like we get to see these children who represent, you know, children from so many aspects of media, be it kids who have been shot in school shootings, or children who have disappeared because of you know, predators, you know, sexual predators, or child predators kidnapping them.

We get to see them get you know, making good on all of the revenge that those children never get to get in real life in cinematic form, watching them rip this woman apart. I mean it is cathartic again, like zach Kreeger's script is cathartic. But then also the end of the film is cathartic. We get to go on a journey with these characters. We get to see Josh Brolin and Julia Garner by the end of the movie really like coming full circle as characters.

You know, Josh Brolin, you know, he saves Julia Garner, but then he almost kills her, but then the kids save all of them. Alex saves everybody, you know again, you go back to the Lord of the Rings with you know, the smallest among us makes the biggest impact. You know, Alex ultimately saves the day. Alex is the one who gets revenge on the witch. You know again, he is Hansel pushing the Witch into the oven.

There's no Gretel in this movie. If anything, you know, you almost have you know, an adult Hansel and Gretel with Julia Garner and Josh Brolin. And then you know, Alex is you know again, an interesting character. And you can see how zach Kreeger almost Deus ex Machin is Alex because Alex in being in the house the whole time he's the only one who would ever know how to undo what's been done. You know, he's the precocious, observant child.

And again you can kind of see how he's having to fend for himself constantly, and he's having to look out for himself and no one else is looking out for him. And the longer the movie goes on, the more self sufficient he has to become to By the end of the movie, he saves the adults who are too busy fighting each other or trying to stop one another from you know, killing the other to do anything about it. And you know, in a lot of ways, Zach Kreeger is probably making good on the what he wishes he could have done when he was a kid. He probably wished, which is there was, you know, some magical twig he could have wrapped somebody's hair around and snapped it and just fixed everything. And look, does killing Gladys in this movie fix everything?

Not necessarily, but it fixes a lot. It fixes those you know, those seventeen kids are able to go back to their homes. I don't understand why. In the opening narration it says the kids aren't the kids never return home. I mean, I guess they literally never return home because they're changed.

But at the same time, like the kids do return home, I don't understand why they say that they don't in the opening narration, when by the end of the movie the kids do return, except you know, some of them are in a worse state than others. I don't know. I enjoyed this movie. I do think, you know, we're we're getting some bangers for horror movies in the last couple of years, and they really are elevating the genre way beyond anything I thought could be possible. And that's also because again you have Josh Brolin and Julia Garner in these like really you know, fantastic actors looking beyond the expectations of themsel elves and looking at horror is less something that all we have to do this because early on in our career nobody would take us seriously.

But as something where Josh Brolin is the executive producer of this film, I mean, you know, he he puts himself in this movie because Pedro Pascal had to, you know, drop out, And I don't understand how Pedro Bescal would have been in this movie in any like, I don't need to see peedromscal and everything, And this movie would have been a lesser film for having him in it, because Josh Brolin's serious and intense energy is really appreciated, and I think it's the For me, it's the best thing in this movie is Josh Brolin, and again, like and how he interacts with everybody. I mean, Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, but Josh Brolin, I think for me, I just one of my favorite actors period. But I just, you know, I just am so glad that horror is finally kind of getting it's it's due.

Like, you know, we have Alien Earth right now is on TV. It's you know, the most successful, you know thing that's going on on FX right now, and it's a horror property. It's based on a horror film from the seventies, for fuck's sake, that's still popular now because it resonated with people. You know, Zach Krieger talked about making a sequel to Weapons, and you know I could see that. I mean again, like, this movie clearly resonated with people in a way that I'm not saying Barbarian didn't, But I think this movie just there's something about this movie that hit more people the right way, and in not only the right way, but the way that I think Zach Kreeger really wanted it to hit them.

This movie hit them. And I think it's the kids of it all. I think it's the parents. I think because you have the parents perspective, because you have the kids perspective, that split perspective, because we get a perspective that again, we get a lot of perspectives. In this movie.

I really appreciate that because again, like for me, I want to know why characters tick, and I want to know why Alex is the way that he is in a way that makes sense that doesn't over explain every and you know, narration is an easy way to do that. And when it's done well, you know, you have a show like Dexter where the whole show really works because we get to know what's in Dexter's head, or something like The House that Jack Built, where you know, again we get to know what's going on in the character's head. That works better than just you know, having a long legs scene where we're having a character talk to the audience directly and regurgitate the again, you know what this is what you've been seeing for the last hour like yeah, and now we're just gonna explain it, like yeah, okay, fine, this way of telling that story, I find it to be a lot more successful, and you know, just not beating the audience over the head and Weapons is as guilty of it as any of these kind of horror movies have been.

But I think Weapons does a lot more right, I mean even more so than Long Legs. Like as much as I liked Long Legs, which I enjoyed Long Legs a lot, I think this movie has a lot no pun intended Longer Legs than Long Legs will in terms of making an impact broadly and with with the horror community and with a larger audience. I think this movie got more people through the door then Long Legs did. And I think that this movie's marketing was more successful than Long Legs because I think the movie that was advertised is the movie that people saw, and I think Long Legs was misadvertised, which can kill a movie. And I think Long Legs suffered tremendously from misadvertising.

This movie did not. The expectations with this movie were set correctly and this movie executed in it every way possible. And again the amount of money that this movie has made, I think is it speaks volumes to that, so I you know, I think for me, Weapons is a movie that in a lot of ways is Barbarian, but with a second and third pass having been done, there's still a lot of the themes of Barbarian, of generational trauma being put on you by other people. What does trauma look like? How does trauma affect us in the short term, in the long term.

I think it's all here in Weapons like it was in Barbarian. I just think in this movie, it's more interesting. I think what we're talking about is more interesting, and the conversation we're having is just a little bit more engaging. And I want to have engage in conversations with filmmakers through their film, through the medium that they want to have engage in conversations with the audience, which is film. I mean, we can talk to filmmakers.

We used to do that all the time on the Culture Cast. My friend Mike White and co collaborator on co founder in weirding Way Media. He talks to filmmakers all the time. Like to talk to them directly is one thing, But when you're watching a film and especially one where it's written and directed by the same person. You're having a conversation directly with the filmmaker, and what better way to do it than with a filmmaker who has something interesting to say, And I think Zach Krieger does have something interesting to say.

I think for me in a lot of ways, I'm still waiting to see the further refinement of that message without having to lay it all out in the third act. And I think maybe his next film will do that, but you know, maybe it won't, and it'll still be a further refinement of this with that kind of third act reveal, which I would still be okay with because his tone resonates with me. I think is idea of how to be external with your Catharsis matters to me as well and means a lot to me. And you know, as someone who struggles with mental health, which you know it's not an addiction, but it does tear at the fiber of your being and weaken your ability to operate on a daily basis in a substantive way the way addiction seemingly does, at least when people talk about it.

You know, it's just another thing that makes you vulnerable and vulnerability especially. You know, it's one thing to be honest about being vulnerable. It's another thing to struggle with being vulnerable, and vulnerability, you know, comes in a lot of forms. And to open up and be honest with people about what you're struggling with, be it addiction, be it mental health, is to show vulnerability. And you know, Zach Kreeger, you know, again opens up that you know, this movie is him externalizing his grief.

That is not, you know, something you're seeing a lot of filmmakers saying on a daily basis in Hollywood that this is, you know, my grief being externalized. And you know, I lost my friend, and so I just started writing like that's. I appreciate that honesty from him as a filmmaker because I you know, that honesty is apparent in his you know, in his end product, in the films that he's making, and I don't foresee him changing the way he does things anytime soon. Similarly to Jordan Peel and these other directors, like they are they are part and parcel with the film that they're making, and you know, I appreciate that, and I appreciate someone who has something to say about addiction and trauma and grief.

And if you have any interest in checking this movie out, if you're on the fence, I would say give it a watch, give it a look horror. If horror is not your strong suit, it's not as much of a horror movie as Barbarian was. There are horror horrific moments in this film. But I think in this day and age, like not watching something because it might scare you, Like the real world is scary enough. This is a kind of horror that you can experience in the safety of your own home, in the kind of sanctity of your own home, and it's just a screen.

Enjoy it for the genre that it is, not because it's trying to scare you. And look, if the movie does scare you, that's also kind of the intention to be fair. So I don't know what we're gonna be talking about on the next episode of the Culture Cast. Thank you for tuning in, Thank you for listening to me for the last hour, talk about weapons. If you've enjoyed this like, rate and review the show on iTunes, or leave me a comment on Spotify, or engage with me over at the Patreon Patreon dot com slash Culturecast.

That is where you can go to support the show financially, and you should because times are hard and you know, we got to move the needle somehow. And yeah, head on over to Weirdingwaymedia dot com to check out all the other shows that I'm on, including this one, including Scary Stories We Tell which is on hiatus right now, including The Shabby Detective, and including the Culchac tapes. So many things, so many great things that you could be checking out over at weirdowaymedia dot com and you should, so thank you as always for listening and I. Will catch you on the next episode. Bottom still stoo