It’s no wonder that Weapons is a hit at the U.S. box office as the movie arrives at the perfect time when our political fears manifest every day in America where we feel helpless to talk about. Now there is a horror movie that answers to our worst nightmare—mass school shootings.
And it is true what the preteen female protagonist announces in the opening voice-over of the film that the children didn’t come back. The children who died in Sandy Hook certainly have not come back.
What I respect and admire about filmmaker Zach Cregger is that he set out to create an entertaining yet meaningful feature film, one that conveys his political point of view without hitting the audience over the head with a didactic hammer. With Weapons, he inspires us to confront our everyday fear of sending children to school—never knowing whether they will return.
In Danse Macabre, Stephen King reveals that our every day fear and the ordinary are the most primal and effective sources of horror. Zach Cregger took the same approach on Weapons, inspired by his own friend’s sudden death from an ordinary accident.
The metaphor for gun violence is conveyed through the children’s disappearance at 2:17 and Archer’s dream of the numbers 2:17 appearing on the VFX assault weapon above the clouds. This symbolizes the historical 217 votes in the House of Representatives that passed the 2022 ban on assault rifles—a measure that tragically died in the Senate and whose failure continues to cost the lives of children and adults across America.
And then you might ask: who is the real villain—Aunt Gladys, the dying witch who also happens to be a parasite of America? Your guess is as good as mine, LOL! After all, who has historically claimed to be hunted as a witch, even while their sorcery is nothing more than the corruption of political power? =D
