Weapons - Horror’s Third Act Problem

After 2022’s Barbarian became a breakout hit – earning 10x its budget – screenwriter / director Zach Cregger quickly became one of the most sought-after names in Hollywood. He was soon tapped to direct the upcoming Resident Evil remake, slated for 2026. But first comes Weapons, a spiritual follow-up to Barbarian that, according to early promos, is set in the same universe.

Though Weapons hasn’t been released yet, I wanted to take a look at the script while buzz is still building – and before the final cut colors my take. I’ve noticed a worrying pattern lately, horror films have struggled with a common issue: strong setups that fizzle out by the end, leaving audiences unsatisfied. 

“...be prepared for an ending that might rub you the wrong way.” – “Ending was lacking closure’”– “...the story’s payoff doesn’t quite reach its biblically good setup.” – “Not sure the payoff is worth it in the end.” – “Can’t understand how a film that started out as good as this one does ends up in the mess I watched.” – “...the third act just gives up.” 

Here are a few snippets from reviews of Barbarian and other recent commercial horror hits – Longlegs, Heretic, and The Substance. So what’s tripping up horror writers when it comes to the final act? Are they losing steam – or just checking out once they’ve secured the price of admission?

OPENING IMAGE

“This is a true story…” recounts the disembodied 11-year-old Maddie through dark, eerie voiceover. She narrates a montage of children simultaneously vanishing into the night, all at exactly 2:17 AM. 

All the missing kids were from the same class – young teacher Justine’s. Only one student, Alex, shows up to an empty classroom the next morning, with no idea where everyone else has gone.

Maddie explains that police questioned Alex for hours, hoping to uncover how – and why – this all happened. But they come up empty. She sets the stage for the schoolhouse meeting that follows: confusion, frustration, and a growing sense of unease.

The cold open runs long and doesn’t serve its usual purpose as a story microcosm. Instead, it acts as an info dump through an uninformed lens – more like a Star Wars crawl laying out the backstory. 

SETUP

We formally meet Justine Gandy, the third-grade teacher whose entire class – except Alex – has disappeared. At the ‘big meeting’, the town is desperate for answers. Leading the charge is Archer, a grieving father who lashes out at the school counselor and turns the community’s suspicion and anger squarely toward Justine.

The town turns on Justine, branding her complicit, or at best, negligent, and demands accountability. Her emotional plea, insisting she loved these kids and is a victim too, falls on deaf ears. No one’s interested in sympathy – they want someone to blame.

Andrew, the school principal, steps in to block Archer’s attack and quickly ushers Justine out. She’s told to keep her head down and sent home. On the way, she stops at a liquor store, ignoring Anthony, a homeless man asking for change. As she grabs a bottle of vodka, she receives a threatening phone call. 

INCITING INCIDENT

As the town’s trauma shifts from personal to public, anger locks onto Justine. Paranoia sets in. She spots a truck idling outside the store and believes she’s being followed – her sense of safety unraveling with each glance over her shoulder.

She is harassed and frightened by someone who vandalizes her car, which births a less insipid Justine. She is forced to take the offensive to protect herself and resolve her own trauma. 

DEBATE

In the debate section, Justine attempts to busy herself with work. Humiliated, she’s put on leave and told to avoid the school – and especially Alex.

Cregger aligns us with Justine by showing her vulnerability. We see who she was before the chaos – though hints surface that she’s crossed professional lines before.

Though these empathetic qualities make Justine sympathetic, they also fuel the parents’ suspicion. Her grief runs deep, and without work to distract her, she’s drawn to Alex – a fellow survivor.

Justine visits the police station, where a dismissive officer brushes off her concerns. She spots Paul, an officer with whom she shares an implied history.

Paul meets Justine in a bar, where he waves away some work related injuries. He’s awkward and passes on sharing a drink. She reveals a different side to her personality – attributing blame to Paul for difficulties arising from his job.

Paul holds his temper but accuses her of feeling sorry for herself. Despite their divide, she persuades him to drink and come home with her. By morning, she doubts Paul and the force are doing enough to find the missing kids.

BREAK INTO TWO

Ignoring orders, Justine follows Alex home to find his house overgrown, dusty, and boarded up. She rings the bell but gets no answer and peers inside.

She calls Andrew, vindicated, but discovers he doesn’t want to help as she overstepped her authority. 

FUN AND GAMES

At the liquor store, Justine is attacked by Donna – Paul’s wife – who accuses her of getting Paul drunk to sleep with him.

Returning home and drinking heavily to evade the guilty visions she’s suffering, Justine is visited unexpectedly.

This pushes the story into supernatural, malevolent territory rather than the more orchestrated crime / drama angle – think Prisoners or The Place Beyond the Pines – we’ve experienced so far. Once I imagined Kathryn Hahn from The Studio as Gladys, it was impossible to shake, so I’m inflicting this onto you, too. Shaken, Justine returns to Alex and attempts to engage him. 

She knocks on the door to speak to Alex’s parents, but is left unanswered. She camps in her car outside, eventually falling asleep. Alex’s bedraggled mother approaches and enters Justine’s car.

After her hair is stolen for unknown reasons, page 31 reveals a Rashomon-style shift – jumping through time and viewpoints. Archer struggles with whether to grieve his son Matthew, caught between hope and despair. He obsessively reviews the footage of the disappearance.

Archer confronts Ed, the police captain, pressing for leads and zeroing in on Justine as a suspect.

We see Archer’s outburst at the school meeting recontextualized through his eyes. He tails Justine afterward, becoming the idling truck she spotted, then follows her home and vandalizes her car.

At 2:17 AM, Archer wakes, convinced Matthew is home. In a surreal scene, he chases his son through a dreamlike forest, confronting a giant floating rifle while Matthew hides in a flawless replica of their house. 

Inside the doppelganger house, he meets the garish woman, linking this supernatural event to Justine’s experience. 

He wakes confused, trying to match Matthew’s path in his Ring footage with the dream. Tracking the route, Archer finds another grieving parent’s home and asks for their footage to verify Matthew’s escape.

As he tracks the route, Archer encounters and confronts Justine at a gas station. As their conversation heats up,  a savage Andrew unexpectedly attacks them without explanation.

Archer tries to protect Justine from the wild principal, but the chapter ends with Andrew choking him unconscious.

The focus shifts to Paul, who talks to his wife Donna on the phone. They’re trying to get pregnant, Paul is in alcohol recovery, and Ed – the police captain and Paul’s boss – is also his father-in-law. Donna’s out of town for the week. 

On patrol, Paul spots Anthony breaking into a property. He chases him by car and foot, apprehends him, and collects the injury he earlier played down at the bar. 

Scared of infection, Paul panics and beats the handcuffed Anthony. Knowing this could land him in hot water, he cuts a deal:

Trying to avoid fallout, Paul confesses to Ed. Both worry that if reported, the department could be punished. 

Justine invites Paul to share a drink. The next day, he leaves her place hungover and ashamed of his infidelity. Returning home, he’s surprised Donna came back early from her trip.

This gives context to why Donna attacked Justine – Paul claims Justine got him drunk to excuse his behavior. We’re in a very delicate situation; Ed possesses damaging information on Paul, and if he learns how Paul treated his daughter…

MIDPOINT 

At the midpoint, Paul spots Anthony near the police station, likely to report the beating.

Furious, Paul chases Anthony to prevent the report. We know now that Andrew, Paul, and Ed are all willing (in some shape or form) to allow authoritative indiscretions to be swept under the rug – begging the question – is there a coverup happening here? 

BAD TO WORSE

We jump back in time and perspective to Anthony smoking crack in a park. Surviving by stealing and pawning, he spots a poster offering a hefty reward for tips on the missing children.

We experience Paul’s assault through Anthony’s eyes. Fading in and out of consciousness, he stumbles away beaten black and blue, identifying Alex’s seemingly abandoned family house as an easy target to loot. Breaking in, he doesn’t notice Alex’s unresponsive parents sitting still in the dark, which freaks him out.

Weirded out, Anthony hurries about looting the house. He checks the basement…

He flees with stolen silverware to the pawnbroker, spotting the reward poster again. I love how Anthony clashes with the cops, then immediately finds something he has to report to them. That’s conflict, baby! After smoking to ease withdrawals, he calls the cops to report what he saw but is reluctant to come in. Cutting back to his arrival at the station, Paul chases Anthony into a forest.

Convinced he’s hallucinating, Anthony flees to his tent. Paul follows, once again getting pierced by dirty syringes. Enraged, Paul prepares to shoot when —

Paul drives to Alex’s house, leaving Anthony in the backseat. Hours pass as Anthony wonders what’s happening. When Paul finally emerges, something feels very wrong.

Next, we focus on Andrew before he turned violent. He warns Justine not to contact Alex again. She insists he check on Alex’s welfare. He compromises, agreeing to invite the parents for a wellness meeting.

At work, Andrew meets Gladys, who strongly resembles the figure haunting the others.

Gladys claims to be Alex’s aunt, caring for him while his parents suffer consumption. Andrew insists he can only speak to a legal guardian.

At home, Andrew and his wife Ginny are visited by Gladys, who invites herself in and begins a strange ritual after confirming Andrew hasn’t yet reported her.

Her folk-magic is complex, resembling sympathetic voodoo. She uses sticks as conduits, wrapping victims’ hair around them as targets. Her blood activates the spell, smeared on the victim to imprint them. After assembling the stick-hair-blood bundle, she rings a golden bell to awaken the spell, then snaps the stick to trigger its effect.

Once triggered, the subject enters a trance, possessed. Andrew attacks and kills Ginny, controlled by Gladys’ magic. She uses water to neutralize the spell and replaces Ginny’s hair with the locket stolen from Justine.

Andrew is unleashed to hunt and kill Justine, sprinting cross-town with no self-preservation – he has become a weapon. For me, his chapter is the least effective because we’ve seen its culmination and the how of it all isn’t fascinating. 

BREAK INTO THREE

Here, Justine, Archer, Paul, and Andrew converge. Archer’s interruption delays Andrew’s assault, letting Justine escape. Andrew chases on foot but is struck and killed by a car while Archer pursues.

Archer and Justine recover in the hospital. Once foes, their shared ordeal bonds them, and they both want to solve what’s happening.

Using Archer’s mapping, Justine pinpoints Alex’s house as the epicenter of suspicious activity.

FINALE

This section, from Alex’s POV, opens with a flashback of Justine teaching about parasites. At home, Alex’s dad informs him that Aunt Gladys is coming to stay as she requires end of life care. He doesn’t expect her to be with them for long. With childlike curiosity, Alex peers into Gladys’ room, filled with paraphernalia required for her rituals. 

When Alex’s dad doesn’t pick him up, Alex walks home and finds his parents unresponsive. Gladys now appears young and happy.

Gladys demands he keep her presence secret and manipulates his parents to stab themselves as a warning. Unable to confess what’s wrong, Alex cries out in frustration.

His life falls into a routine: school, groceries, caring for his motionless parents, and fearing Gladys. He starts piecing together her rituals – the sticks, hair, and water.

On Valentine’s Day, Gladys uses scraps from class cards instead of hair to control Alex’s classmates. At 2:17 AM, all seventeen children rush to Alex’s house.

Detectives soon inspect the house. Alex is threatened while his parents and the 17 children hide temporarily in the forest. He denies any knowledge of the disappearances. 

We see Justine approaching Alex, now with the additional context that he is worried for his parent’s life. 

One day, returning from grocery shopping, Alex finds Gladys holding Paul and Anthony captive. She warns him not to cross a salt line –  a traditional folklore method of containing spirits. 

Outside, Justine and Archer arrive. Paul beckons Justine inside. Inside, Anthony attacks. Using the chaos as a distraction, Alex tries breaking into Gladys’ room, but crossing the salt line causes his parents to attack him.

He retreats, drawing blood from his father. This disrupts the spell, causing his parents to attack each other and clearing his way into Gladys’ room.

Justine fights off Paul with a cheese grater while Anthony wrestles Archer downstairs into the basement. Justine acquires Paul’s pistol and uses it to shoot him and Anthony. 

Alex finds Gladys’ room empty. In the basement, Archer frantically searches for Matthew. Gladys appears, smears him with blood, and compels him to attack Justine.

Just as Gladys seems victorious, Alex uses his knowledge to undo and redirect her spells.

The children pile on her, reducing her to nothing. 

Archer reunites with Matthew, and Justine sees Alex with his no-longer rabid parents. Relief is brief – they remain ‘absent.’ Undoing the spell and killing Gladys didn’t restore them fully.

Thus concludes Weapons. 

CONCLUSION

Let’s start with some positives. 

The set up is brilliant, intriguing and concerning in equal measure. The tone and atmosphere of Maybrook is eerie and Cregger populates it with propulsive, interconnected characters. I applaud the move to shift the protagonist and perspective Rashomon-style. Each new interpretation recontextualizes and elaborates on the last. Cregger pulls the rug from under our feet just as we’re settling into the life of Justine, learning her habits, her problems, her aspirations - we’re disorientated in the best possible way.

But. 

Mystery thrives on the unknown. Curiosity is cheap, answers are expensive. Not only does the entire third act feel disjointed from the first two, it actually disregards the strong set up in large parts. Our brains are wired to seek resolution, and Weapons doesn’t deliver. Begin by asking yourself – why did Gladys kidnap the children? 

She already achieved a newfound youth, seemingly by possessing Alex’s parents, so there was no necessity to leech off the children to maintain this. Does she just keep them as an army of child soldiers? Is she a repeat offender? Does she want Alex for herself and angers at the Valentine’s expressions of affection from his peers? Not only does the script not give us any answers, it lacks necessary clues to allow us to form our own. 

Gladys is a force of antagonism but only appears as a named character on page 74 of 118, meaning we can’t track her as a character beforehand. There’s very little room for subtext, implications, or context.

A great deal of the human drama is lost – either forgotten about or rendered irrelevant by character deaths. Emotional stakes often get sacrificed to plot logic. Writers sometimes focus too much on the mechanics of the solution and forget that audiences also want emotional payoff. Did Paul contract any disease from his interaction with Anthony? How did Ed and Paul’s relationship change after he cheated on Donna? Could Archer convince the other parents that Justine wasn’t complicit? There are a dozen intriguing threads left hanging. 

Maybrook initially feels large; we see it through various perspectives. But once they all interact, it has the opposite effect. The town feels small, as though nobody exists beyond our primary cast. This is typified by the fact that Alex’s parents don’t have friends, neighbors, family who might check on them in the months after a tragedy that would make national news. 

Like other recent horror near-successes, we’re left with a great set up wasted on disappointing payoffs, over or under explaining third acts, and a bad aftertaste. We’re left with a handful of great images and vignettes – the running children, the floating assault rifle, Gladys submerged in the ceiling – but they don’t mean much. 

Even the title Weapons feels more evocative than the finale we got. Is this some sort of allegory for a school shooting? Radicalisation? I have a feeling we’ll learn the answers to this in Cregger’s press tour and beyond… which doesn’t excite me. I don’t want to have to do additional homework to enjoy a story. I don’t want to be bashed over the head with themes like The Substance or Heretic, but I need something in order to assess how I feel about a story. 

I always feel a little guilty for criticising mystery because it’s a near impossible task – delivering something both inevitable and surprising. You’re asking for scrutiny – and viewers will test you. It’s a genre that demands elegance under pressure.

Weapons locks Act 1, loads Act 2, but misfires Act 3. We award a 3/5.