Writer-director Zach Cregger’s Weapons has been praised for its chilling ending, and now he’s willing to share his interpretation of what that ending really means. Spoilers ahead!
The mystery begins with the disappearance of 17 school children in a small town, all from the same class. The resolution centers around Alex Lilly, played by 9-year-old Cary Christopher, who is the only boy from the lost class to show up for school. The reason he didn’t vanish is because an unsettling family member is responsible for the disappearance: Gladys, played by Amy Madigan.
Gladys is a supernatural force with magical powers over anyone she chooses. She can turn her victims into mindless drones and capture them, draining their lifeforce. But who or what exactly was this weird old woman in Weapons?
Cregger has only theories, no solid confirmations. “I don’t know the answer, but I love that I don’t know the answer,” he says. Two possible options were presented to Madigan: either Gladys is a regular person trying to heal herself of a life-threatening illness using her spells as a last-ditch effort, or she’s not a person at all, trying to simulate what she thinks a normal human being looks like.
Madigan brought a unique blend of natural ebullience and command to the role, making Gladys both kooky and menacing. Cregger recalls meeting Madigan for lunch when casting the part, where he knew instantly that she was meant to play Gladys. “Within 10 minutes of sitting down at the table—the food hadn’t even come yet—I was like, ‘You have to play this part! There’s no one else. It has to be you,'” he said.
The film’s ending is a cathartic and chilling conclusion, with Alex using Gladys’s own spell-casting tree against her, sending the platoon of missing children on a house-to-house rampage as they chase down the witch and tear her limb from limb. But what happens next? Cregger says that the true nature of Gladys is destroyed along with her body, leaving only questions about what exactly she was.
The film’s writer-director emphasizes that he wasn’t trying to preach a sermon about the children of addicts but rather drew inspiration from his own childhood experiences with addiction. “I’m trying to just suck the venom out,” he says. The immortal witch Gladys is a symbol of the destructive force of addiction, and Cregger hopes the film can spark conversations about this important issue.
In Weapons, Cregger has crafted a modern fairy tale with a dark twist, leaving audiences unsettled but hopeful for a more understanding world.
Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/weapons-ending-amy-madigan