Weapons Movie Review (2025): Dark Horror, Trauma & the Weaponization of Innocence
A Horror That Hits Close to Home
Weapons Movie Review: When I clicked on Weapons (2025), I knew nothing about the cast, the director, or even the trailer. Pure curiosity pulled me in. What I found was a disturbing blend of psychological thriller, horror, and dark fairy tale.
The premise is simple yet chilling: seventeen children vanish from a classroom, leaving behind only Alex, a quiet boy carrying a terrible secret. His teacher, Justine (played with grit by Julia Garner from Ozark), begins to suspect something sinister in Alex’s home life, but even she cannot imagine the nightmare unfolding inside.
The Weaponization of Silence
At the heart of Weapons lies Alex’s forced silence. His aunt Gladys, who initially appears frail and sympathetic due to her cancer diagnosis, reveals herself as a predator. Using a form of voodoo ritual, she collects hair and personal effects to “weaponize” her victims, stripping them of free will and turning them into zombie-like puppets.
By controlling Alex’s parents, Gladys silences him with the ultimate weapon: fear. If he speaks out, his family dies. Silence becomes complicit, and Alex becomes a prisoner in his own home.
Gladys: Horror’s Most Unlikely Villain
Gladys is one of the most insidious horror villains in recent years. At first glance, she fits the archetype of the weak elderly relative, but her insidiousness emerges slowly, cutting hair from the teacher in her sleep, turning Alex’s parents into mindless husks, and forcing Alex to feed both them and the basement full of missing children.
Her true endgame remains murky. Was she trying to rejuvenate herself with youth? Did the ritual require innocent blood? The lack of clarity here is both intriguing and frustrating, leaving audiences clutching at symbolic straws rather than narrative certainty.
Fairy-Tale Horror and Dark Symbolism
Weapons borrows heavily from fairy-tale and folklore structures:
- The Pied Piper: children lured away from the village.
- Hansel and Gretel: innocence consumed by an older predator.
- The Devouring Children: in the climax, the basement kids turn on Gladys and literally consume her, flipping the power dynamic back on the abuser.
This fable-like ending works as a grim metaphor: innocence can fight back, but not without being scarred.
Trauma, Complicity, and the Cost of Silence
The film suggests that trauma robs victims of parts of themselves mirrored in the children’s inability to speak afterward. Alex, too, embodies the silent victim of abuse, manipulated into complicity by fear. Meanwhile, his classmates’ earlier silence during his bullying foreshadows their collective imprisonment.
The most unsettling takeaway? Systems, families, schools, authority figures often fail to protect the vulnerable. Silence, whether forced or complicit, becomes the deadliest weapon of all.
Final Verdict: Disturbing, Imperfect, but Unforgettable
Weapons is not a straightforward horror film. It is a disturbing hybrid of psychological thriller and dark folklore, one that unsettles more through implication than gore. While some symbols (like the unexplained M16 floating above the house) feel disconnected, the film’s core, the weaponization of silence and innocence resonates.
Fans of Get Out and The Witch may appreciate its ambition, even if the storytelling occasionally stumbles.
⭐ Rating: 3.5/5 — chilling, thematically rich, but unevenly executed.
Want More Dark Thrills?
If you found Weapons chilling and thought-provoking, dive into more psychological horror and sci-fi with my other reviews. Check out my take on The Substance, a story of suspense and body horror, and catch up on the mid-season thrills in Alien Earth.
👉 Read The Substance Review
👉 Mid-Season Alien Earth Review
Brace yourself for more stories where innocence, power, and survival collide.
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