In Weapons, a grieving town embarks on a witch hunt following the sudden disappearance of 17 children, only for that term to take on a much more literal meaning.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
At first, schoolteacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) is scapegoated, an all-caps ‘WITCH’ spray-painted into the side of her car, the kind of far-flung accusation only a desperate parent would make. In hindsight, that paint job doubles up as a giant foreshadowing sign, pointing to the exact kind of evil lurking in Maybrook’s midst all along.
With her cheery disposition, girlish voice and overly accommodating nature, Gladys (Amy Madigan) appears as a sweet old woman. “We have not met, is that right?,” principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) asks her. He’s looking into Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), the only student from his class who didn’t disappear, and Gladys has shown up at school, claiming to be his aunt.
It’s clear why he’s double checking—her shock of red hair, clownish over-applied lipstick and oversized glasses mark her as an instantly memorable presence, one that’s been appearing in the townspeople’s nightmares and visions, as unnerving on their ceiling in the dark as it is in the woods in broad daylight. In person, however, she comes across as fragile, if a little kooky, weaponizing exactly this perception of her to gain access to spaces and terrorize their inhabitants.
When she asks to stay with Alex’s mother (her niece), so ill she needs hospice care and claiming to have nowhere else to go, she can’t help but say yes. Once under the spell of Gladys’ blood magic, the poor, trusting woman (Callie Schuttera) and her husband (Whitmer Thomas) fall into a trance and are forced to obey her every command.
When she later appears at Marcus’ doorstep, panting, apologetic and pleading for a glass of water, his partner Terry (Clayton Farris) can’t help but let her in. Marcus falls into that same trance, bludgeoning Terry to death under the witch’s control. Him being hit by a car later, while still under her spell, puts a convenient end to him looking into Alex’s home life too closely.
Madigan lets false notes creep into her portrayal of Gladys performing normalcy, rendering her even more unsettling. Once let into Marcus’ house, she momentarily forgets she’s meant to winded, enthusiastically admiring his knicknacks, only to remember her ruse and begin fake coughing. The stagey pretence is momentarily funny, but also sparks the frantic gut feeling that something here is off.
Even more chilling is when Gladys’ facade drops completely. Calmly, methodically, she threatens Alex at the breakfast table: Should he tell anyone about her, she’ll have his parents kill themselves. To demonstrate, she makes them stab themselves in the face with their forks, repeatedly. Gone are the high-pitched voice and the theatrics, the wig and makeup. This is a simple conversation, and writer-director Zach Cregger laces it with as much suffocating terror as any of Weapons’ jumpscares.
Gladys not only preys on people’s kindness, but, much like the numerous parasites Weapons references, she also feeds off them, draining them of life. At her most ill, she even weaponizes her vulnerability, manipulating Alex into helping her place a spell on his classmates so she can lure them to her house.
It’s revealed that she stashed them in her basement—if there’s one thing we learned from Cregger’s 2022 film Barbarian, it’s that the director loves a creepy basement—and is siphoning their youthful energy.
At school, she fobs off questions about Alex’s parents by telling Marcus they have a “touch of consumption,” an odd choice of phrase, but one that betrays her backstory. Gladys doesn’t get a POV chapter like the rest of Weapons’ characters do, but it’s easy to fill in the blanks—in using the historical term for what we call “tuberculosis”, she inadvertently reveals she’s been alive a lot longer than we’d assume.
Her big mistake is underestimating Alex, who weaponizes her own magic against her. So used to being in control, she takes it for granted, and it being wrenched away from her at the end is incredibly satisfying. Abandoning any shred of self-poise in one of the film’s funniest sequences, Gladys runs through the neighbourhood, shrieking wildly as the captive children chase her, then violently dismember her. By the end, the all-powerful witch is reduced to a punchline.
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