Weapons, A movie structured like a classic mystery Novel.

In the month after Weapons has graced us with it's absolutely amazing presence, it has inspired a lot of chatter, every single youtube critic and their mother has taken it upon themselves to find every single allegory in this movie.

Be it an addiction allegory or a school shooting allegory or some cultural thing, maybe it's a mental health thing, maybe it's none of them, it is possible that Zach Cregger wanted to make a story about T-posing kids running after the woman in Phoebe's portrait from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Season 10 Episode 6, who has suddenly decided to come to life and terrorize this poor child called Alex.

No not that Alex

No that's Alyx, actually come to think of it we don't actually know how the kid's name is spelt, I mean sure there's the subtitles but sometimes they can be done by a separate company.

And we dont have access to the script and even if we did, who knows maybe the people in universe don't even know how to pronounce it.

Anyways, random bullshit aside, there is a lot to talk about in this movie...

You begin by thinking that the main character of this story is going to be Justine I mean the story is about her class disappearing, everyone blames her for it, and they use her past to justify their hate directed at her, which is clearly just a maladaptive way for them to deal with their grief of having lost their children so abruptly.

The sudden disappearance is very obviously a metaphor for a school shooting, and if it is not obvious then the movie makes it pretty fucking obvious with the name and then the dream where Archer sees a gun over a house.

And one of the much less talked about problems when it comes to school shootings is how often times the educators of the perpetrators are blamed for the actions of the perpetrator, negligence lawsuits ensue over legitimate or otherwise issues raised by the parents as they try to get some justice in this profoundly unjust situation.

Justine is blamed cause this is her class, and she has "an unprofessional streak" meaning that she sometimes gets too involved with her students, like for example hugging a crying child, I don't know about you but that's not that terrible in my books.

She also has a criminal record, which doesn't help and everyone just collectively decides to harass her and make her life a living hell.

She in all her zeal, decides once again to go against the school principal's advice and follows Alex home, much to his dismay, because the boy currently does not want to be followed given his situation that we learn about later on.

But we get a few hints about it from Justine's snooping around the place, as she sees his parents in a perpetual catatonic state, and the entire apartment is covered up.

She tries to report this to the principal, but is shot down and told to abandon it as Wong.. I mean Marcus sees the potential scandal from this.

Justine also did the mistake of trusting a man in a bar and ended up sleeping with Paul, someone she has history with but is currently... rather was in a happy relationship with Donna until he slept with Justine, the movie then switches to Paul as it begins to take a more investigative tone.

Through Paul we learn the police's side of things and how they plan to deal with this sudden disappearance, but we also see that as a cop he is not actually that good.

This movie's themes about addiction begin to creep in as Paul finds a junkie and tries to arrest him very poorly, gets hit with a needle in his pocket and immediately proceeds to assault him which is captured by his own camera.

Leading Paul to go to his superior just like Justine did but this time in shame instead of pride and vindication as Justine did.

Meanwhile Justine gets a lock of her hair stolen by a figure from inside Alex's house as James the junkie steals from the house.

Or wait maybe that happens later?

Was this a deliberate failed attempt to replicate this movie's non linear structure? Or was that my failure to write that I am trying to mask? Who knows?

Oh wait this screengrab is also much later.

But speaking of this screengrab, the main reason why this scene is so important is because this is the first indication/hint we get towards what bigger thing might be afoot.

Archer, the one father who hasn't given up on his own investigation and is the one who blames Justine the most, confronts her in the middle of her filling up her car with Fuel, and then there comes Marcus running in the exact position that all the children of the town were running in when the disappeared.

A position meant to assert dominance.

I mean its a literal T-Pose

And dominance is accurate because my man Marcus isn't having any of the wannabe detective crap Archer and Justine are putting up, he told Justine to let that shit go, and he is gonna make sure she does, he even managed to get some extra blood and guts on himself for dramatic effect.

But jokes aside, this is the first time everything comes together, so far we had seen the police had no clue, or were sleeping around behind their wife's backs, looking at you Paul.

You know this image would be great was it not for the fact that the one on the ground is Justine and not Paul, as per my understanding she was tricked into believing my man Paul's available, it's Paul who's the piece of shit innit?

But anger's gotta anger I guess.

He get's way more than his comeuppance later on, I mean a peeler to the head is really not the best feeling, how do I know that? I don't know maybe I tried it.

Yes my friends, if you don't like dark humor you don't check this website.

anyways I am digressing, the scene of the attack is the first time we make some progress on the finding out what the fuck is happening here front, as Archer and Justine for once put aside their differences and talk it out as Archer realizes Justine is not really to blame... and shares everything he has learned so far.

His detective work is far more effective as for once they realize that at least two of the children's trajectories converge on Alex's house.

But what the actual fuck is happening here, and when does phoebe's pop out portrait come into play?

Well it turns out that Marcus did try to figure something out about wtf is going on with Alex, but his parents are sick apparently, and Phoebe's portrait is his aunt who is here on their behalf.

Unfortunately this is all a ruse for Gladys to weaponize the poor man against his husband...

And then against Justine, inadvertently giving her and Archer the one reason they needed to team up and begin to trust each other.

But what exactly is it to be weaponized?

Well for that we need the point of view of the one person who has been at the center of this whole thing since the beginning, Ale...James... what?

Well like I said James is a Junkie, and a Burglar, trying to get his next fix.

It is through him that we see what the children are actually doing... they are standing... very creepily...

Just wanting his next Fix, James tries to mention it to the police, but Paul fucks up, catches him and then they are both weaponized.

But who is doing all this?

Finally we reach Alex, the kid caught in the middle of it all, the one being forced to endure horrors no one ever should.

As said before, Gladys is Alex's Aunt, she is a long lost sister of his mother, she has a reputation for being an outcast, the mother allows Gladys to stay out of the goodness of her heart, and hence allows the worst possible thing to happen to her and her family...

Weaponizing is something Glady does, but it is also something she needs, she feeds on the life force of the ones weaponized.

Alex is forced to watch his parents act like puppets without strings, forced to help his "aunt" feed on his entire class, and then feed them and his parents soup as they are literally stripped of their free will.

The final act is the convergence of all the threads, as a weaponized James and Paul fight against Justine and Archer, Justine is forced to kill her ex Paul, with his own gun and as she grieves, a weaponized Archer attacks her.

In the midst of all the chaos, Alex, who has seen the targeting of the weapons process so many times, Targets all the weaponized children at Gladys, an act that triggers his parents to attack and almost kill him.

But as the children get their revenge on the weaponizer by tearing her limb from limb, the spell is broken and Alex has his parents back... broken and catatonic, but he can hug them once again, just as the parents can hug their children once again...

Some of them even started speaking sometime later...

This movie is an Allegory to a lot of things... mostly around addiction and other related issues...

If you didn't know in the earlier days, zombie was a word reserved for certain people controlled by the use of Drugs by a Shaman type figure to do their own bidding.

This actually sounds very close to what the process of Weaponization is that Gladys uses.

Also, for groups such as the Assassins, they were tempted by the promise of heaven in a drug induced stupor.

And they too were then weaponized.

Gladys being a close relative of Alex's mom, shows how people who commit tragedies such as shootings often use the trust that people have in them to sneak their tools of destruction past all security measures...

That is why the Junkie James exists, and he is the one to discover the kids and gets caught trying to tell the info for more money to get his fix, and gets weaponized.

In the end though, for a horror movie it had a satisfying but ill fitting end as the main villain is killed in the most comedic way possible.

But maybe that was the whole point, that people that cause horrific disasters in other people's lives, those who only take are eventually turned into Jokes by those they victimize...