Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all the zombie movies in chronological order. This week, something different as we talk about the 2025 film Weapons. You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures. What do they call them, zombies or something? Zombie.

What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie?

Well, a zombie?

There's, um, Mr. Bill there's...

The living dead. There's a living dead. Get in the zombies. It's an army of zombies.

Because a zombie has no will of his own.

What is wrong?

What is wrong? Hey, everybody. Welcome to Zombie Strains. We're doing something a little different today. I'm here with Andy.

Hey, John.

And we're going to talk about a new movie, one of the summer hits, Weapons, and we're going to do a little breakdown about that. But don't tell Brad. We've snuck into the Zombie Strains lab when he was on vacation, and we're secretly recording this episode. Because of that, I'll be playing the role of producer Brad, though obviously not as well. So let's start with a content warning, like we usually do, Andy. I think there's a couple here, probably.

Yeah, I think so. Well, this is a rated R movie, and it's a horror movie that both features upsetting stuff on the screen, and it also draws on some upsetting themes, I would say.

Yes, and there's a lot of kids in Jeopardy.

Yeah, so The Big E is a movie about a bunch of kids that vanish. The fate of these kids is uncertain for most of the movie, and that is an awfully unsettling thing to watch. So in addition, I mean, there's gore, there's some sexual contact, that sort of stuff. We're not going to get real graphic about it, but if in this climate we live in, in the United States at least, if talking about a class of kids going missing or subjected to harm and danger is upsetting, maybe give this movie a skip and maybe give this episode a skip too.

Well said. All right. I'm going to do a very short producer Brad interpretation here, or impression, excuse me. I'm going to do a very short Professor Brad impression here. So this movie, Weapons, came out on August 8th, 2025. It is directed and written by Zach Kragger. His earlier film Barbarian was a huge sort of cultural, I don't even want to say a cult film, but it was an announcement of a new presence that led to this film. It stars Julia Garner and Josh Brolin in the title roles. Also Alden Ehrenreich. Gary Christopher is the boy, Alex and Benedict Wong is the principal of the school. So let's, I think that's all we need to do for this part, but let's do a 60 second summary. Can you summarize, can you do a non-spoilery summary for us, Andy, and then we'll get into the conversation?

Yeah, so I'm not gonna spoil the resolution of the movie in this summary, but I will say, if you do want to go into Weapons completely with a blank slate, just pause this episode and come back and listen when you've done it. It is a worthwhile thing to do if you are willing to do that, and if you somehow manage to avoid discussion of this film online.

Yeah, it is really rewarding. I did that with both this and 28 Days Later, and I found a really rewarding experience, and I recommend that to anybody. But if that's not your jam, fire away, Andy.

Yeah, and we'll let you know specifically in this episode when we're going to start doing the spoiler half. So at any rate, Weapons is a movie about a community. It's sort of an ensemble cast, and it's told from a number of different perspectives. It is about a community where an entire classroom, with the exception of one boy, of elementary school kids has vanished overnight. Not only do they vanish, but they are caught on door cams and other things, of seemingly willingly all getting up at the same time at night, 2-17, and just running off into the dark. The story follows this ensemble cast of characters. Maybe the closest thing we have to a protagonist is Julia Garner's character Justine. And it follows her and some of the other affected members of the community as they... Some of them are trying to find out what happened to these kids. Others of them sort of just get pulled into the story as it opens up. And the question of the story is, is Justine going to be able to figure out the mystery of what happened to those kids? And is it possible that the kids can be rescued from whatever's befallen them?

Yes. So no spoilers yet, but just thoughts on the opening of the movie. I think one thing that surprised me is, is everything you sort of said was summarized in a narration in the first two minutes of the movie. Yes. And I was expecting the movie to spend a lot. It doesn't, essentially doesn't in the opening, it doesn't open with the tragedy. It just opens after it's happened with us dealing with the consequences. When I first heard the narrator voice, I was a little annoyed because I'm like, hold on a second, are you just going to narrate this whole thing? But that's not what happened.

If this were the 1950s, that little girl narrator would be using a lot of past perfect passive narration. That's a little in-joke for regular zombies.

This is not invisible invader weapons, it's just weapons, so we don't have to worry about that.

In fact, the first big scene is a parent conference at the school from which the kids have disappeared. That's where we meet Justine. She was the teacher of the class that all the kids disappeared from, so she's obviously an object of great interest and suspicion in some cases, even though we know that she didn't really have anything to do with it. She's just as lost as everyone else.

Well, I didn't know that to start, actually. I wasn't sure. I want to get into spoilers pretty quickly, but before we do that, just overall, how did you like this film? We'll go through our questions at the end with a broader conclusion, but do you like how this film was paced, how the story was told?

I loved this film. It feels blasphemous to say this, but I think I was more delighted with this film than I was with 28 years later, which I also loved. Wow. This is a film, it plays with pacing, it plays with perspective. It has really, it has camera work that just really, really works with the story it's trying to tell. I love an ensemble cast like this, and I just, I love a good story where it's really a bunch of different stories that overlap with and inform each other. I love it. It's not for everyone, and I could absolutely see watching this movie and thinking it was kind of a dud. I will also say, you know, and we'll talk about in the spoiler section later, but I truly think the last 10 minutes of this film is some of the most entertaining stuff I have seen on a big screen in a very long time.

Yes, and I think this is where I struggle, and I think I said in our very first episode that I might struggle with some of the more nihilistic aspects of the horror genre. And I think once I reflected on the movie, the last 10 minutes made more sense to me. But my impression leaving the theater was like, God, that is hard. Like I just, it was really hard to take. And this is a modern film trope that sometimes works wonderfully, and sometimes I really struggle with. So for example, I don't love the movies of Quentin Tarantino, because he often mixes the violence and the humor in such a way that I find it distasteful. And that was my gut reaction to the end of this movie. But upon reflection, I kind of want to see it again because I think I realize now that it worked. But I was just really emotionally damaged, for lack of a better word, by one of the children's predicaments at the end.

Absolutely. I mean, it is a rough watch in that sense. I will say it's not as rough as it could be. I mean, it is a dark film. It is not a completely pitch black nihilistic film, I don't think.

No, I don't think so.

So the humor, though, the humor is what really sets us apart, because it's not a horror comedy in the way that, like, I don't know, Ghostbusters, just to date myself here.

Army of Darkness or something.

Army of Darkness is a horror comedy where there's funny lines and comic scenes and kind of little bits and sketches that they do. This movie uses humor with its horror in a way that I thought was pretty masterful. And it actually made me really think about how close the experience of being scared and the experience of laughing are to each other. And this is a movie where you can, and if you are not both laughing and being horrified by the final five minutes of this film, I mean, I've never seen anything quite like it, and that's why I say it was one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen. I was just having feelings, this combination of hilarity and what on earth am I watching? I just can't remember the last horror movie I've seen that did this. And if I were to think about movies that had this sense to them, I mean, I think of like Darren Aronofsky's Mother, and you have to look at some kind of fairly offbeat films, I think, to find humor and disgust mixed in this way.

Yeah, and I'm going to say one more thing, and then I can't take it anymore. I will blow the spoiler horn. Here's the last thing I'll say. The gift he has or the way he relieves tension, because I think in all horror movies, you have to relieve tension somehow. Sometimes you don't, right? Sometimes you're making martyrs or the descent, and it's just unrelenting, right? But usually people like to pace and insert humor or release valves into films, and one of the ways the director does it here is just including all the weird idiosyncratic thing of modern suburban life. They just occur. You know, like something horrific is happening, but it's observed by a man who's mowing his lawn, sort of looking, you know, cocked headed at it, like, well, that's strange. You know, so it's this mundanities. At one point, two characters are about to sit down to dinner, which is this bizarre dinner of like a giant plate of hot dogs. They don't say anything about it. Nothing is mentioned. It's just there. It's ridiculous. And then the horrific scene follows right after. You know, so having said that, I think it's time to go for spoilers. So absolute total spoilers. We're not going to go through the plot beat by beat, but we are going to talk about it, assuming you've seen it and know the plot. So what are we doing now, Andy?

We are...

We're doing spoilers. What are we doing now, Andy?

Oh, right, right, right, right. John, we're doing spoilers now.

Spoilers, yes. Okay, so that's it. That's your warning.

All right, we've given you plenty of time to switch this off now. All right, it's spoiler territory. And let's just go ahead and start with, I mean, the reason we are talking about this on the Zombie podcast, right?

Yes.

And that is because, John, what do we learn is going on with these kids?

So we learn about halfway through, maybe even a little later, that the kids were the victims of a magical spell, of witchcraft. It turns out that one of the boys, Alex, who's the surviving kid, had a quote unquote aunt who came to town and started doing evil magic on his family, and then on these kids. And she essentially uses what feel a lot like old-fashioned magical rituals to make these children her zombies.

Yes.

They're mindless. They cannot feed themselves. They cannot act on their own at all. They're completely under her control. So in a sense, her name is Gladys. She is like a zombie master.

I was surprised and delighted to find, but these are actually, these are zombies that are recognizable all the way back to like white zombie in the early 1930s. Aren't they, John?

These are, because there's no contagion. One zombie does not create another zombie. The only one who can create a zombie is this zombie master. Though it turns out, in the end, if you observe carefully, there's nothing to it except executing the rituals in the correct order, because at the end of the film, Alex does it to free the kids from her spell. You know what else really struck me when you said, we should talk about this like a zombie movie? Early on, especially with White Zombie, we realized the horror of these movies was the horror of being a zombie, and that modern horror movies are about the horror of being pursued by zombies or finding a loved one. It's about the survivor's horror. This is about the horror of becoming somebody else's creature. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. And there's a lot of, and so just to be specific, these zombies are the witch, and she is a fairy tale witch.

100%.

Just like Barbarian, this movie has a real fairy tale vibes to it.

Yes.

The zombies she creates are living people. They're not dead. She's not raising corpses or anything like that. She is stripping the free will from living people, and they basically go inert until she, through some ritual actions, gives them orders. And those orders are usually to move somewhere or to go kill someone, essentially. So you do have zombies killing or trying to kill people in this movie. But it's not because of the innate nature of zombie-dom. It's because they're just, as the movie says, they're just weapons being used by the witch.

Yeah. And to comment on Gladys here for a second, what I like about her is all of her rituals are described and shown. They're not described. They're just shown. So you know that she's, for example, stealing some of the life force from these zombies she creates, because she sort of gets younger and healthier. But also, like, we just see her meditating in front of a tree. And I'm like, is this a branch of Yidrasil? Is this like, what is this tree? And then she does a ritual with some hair and a pointed stick and some of her blood. And they don't tell us how it works. They just show us how it works. So it keeps this mystical fairy tale element. I think it just kills in this movie.

Yeah. And they don't even come out exactly and tell you why she's doing this. No.

We never find out.

That she can pull life energy or something from the zombies she creates and bring it into herself because she's shown to be pretty sick. Yeah.

If I were to compare her to somebody, it would be like the main vampire in Salem's Lot, right? Like he's moving from town to town, stripping the town of its resources and then just moving on to the next town. And I feel like that's what Gladys is doing.

Yeah. She's a really evil witch. No real humanity.

This is not a sympathetic villain.

There's really no nuance to her. I guess the only glimpse of kind of sympathetic nuance we get is when we first meet her, she is very sick and appears to be close to death. Yes. But that's it. And she is brutally killed at the end of this movie, and there are no regrets.

No regrets. And I actually like this turn in modern horror films. I loved the turn of Killmonger and Black Panther, where you kind of go, well, he does have a point. There's none of that here, and there was never going to be, for sure.

So let's talk John about... So there's been a lot written about this movie, and so there's a lot of great essays you can go out and read. And me and John are probably not going to blow your mind here with our analysis of this film.

No. I mean, maybe we will. You don't know.

Yeah. Okay. I shouldn't sell ourselves short.

Don't sell us short, Andy. We're smart guys.

So, John, what... So let me... Way back when, you and I did an episode of a different podcast where we talked about Alien.

Yeah, that was our podcast. That was my podcast, the Splatbook.

The Splatbook, that's right. And I remember in discussing that, kind of something crystallizing in my mind that I liked about the Alien movies was that they are pretty nihilistic, but not entirely. They don't go all the way. They leave room for people. They leave room for hope, at least the good Alien movies do. And the ones that are, Alien movies that are bad don't do that. Anyway, I'm trying really hard not to start talking about Alien here.

Looking at you, Alien 3.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So John, I guess this is an upsetting movie to watch because the topic is kids put in danger. So the kids survive, but John, what is the shadow that is cast by their survival at the end?

Well, I just want to say about their survival. So actually, some people are killed, but aside from the witch, all of the kids actually survive and come out of it. As do the kids, Alex's parents, as do a couple of other characters, but everyone who survives, and this is the darkness of the film, is broken. And everyone who is part of this ritual, part of this horrible, just like this random evil person came to town, conducted all this magic, and everyone who survives is broken. And some of them were broken before. And so there's this glint of hope. He says at the end, here's a major spoiler, the kids woke up that day, and a year later, some of them even started talking. So it's this, like there's no hope for these kids. Like they save them, but it's really no life at all.

So is that really, so tell me how that made you feel. I think you had an initial reaction that was more negative than me towards this. Tell me about that.

It was just so hard. I didn't think it was bad. There's a shot at the end. Okay, so at the end of the movie, Alex, who's the one surviving boy who isn't a zombie, is desperately trying to free his parents from the witch's spell, which happens. But right before that, they're like crazed, fast-moving zombies smashing down a door trying to kill their own child. And then the spell breaks and they just sort of slump down in their mindless lumps, and Alex is hugging them with a huge smile on his face. And then the camera reverses and we see the zombified parents who are clearly, for lack of a better word, just drooling idiots at this point. And the narrator tells us that's the case, and that just stabbed me right in the heart. Right? Just everything Alex had to go through to live. He did all this stuff and he's still lost in a sense.

Yeah. This is a horror movie where the evil is stopped, but the damage that has been done already is permanent, essentially.

And it just hurt my heart to watch Alex. So, there was another scene where Gladys the Witch is manipulating him into doing what she wants, which is to get a personal item from all the kids. She can turn him into zombies. And he resists, right? Because he's a morally well-rounded creature. And she casts a spell and his parents start stabbing themselves in the face with the forks at the dinner table. And then combine that with Alex. Alex has this whole burden of knowing this and not being able to tell anybody. And then also, he has to feed everybody. She sends him to the store to get soup, and there's many montages of him just walking around, trying to feed these kids and his parents, and just keep everybody alive. And this is all on Alex. And as more of this is revealed, my heart is so broken for Alex. That's why I found it so upsetting.

I agree that while on paper, it sounds like the biggest horror in this movie is the 20-some kids that disappeared.

And it is. I mean, it's terrible.

It is on paper.

But that's not where our focus is.

The horror that you feel is actually one, the survivor, Alex. He desperately needs help. There are adults in his world that want to help him, but they can't. They can't help him because they don't understand his situation. And he can't tell them the situation because that will make the situation much, much worse. So he is stuck in this. He is a kid with his kid's perspective, being used by one adult and being surrounded by other adults that don't... I don't know, it was just rough to watch him not be able to ask for help. And to know that these flawed adults around him aren't really able... They're not going to be able to help him anyway. And in the end, it's Alex who defeats the witch. Like the adults don't really... They don't really do anything. I mean, so Justine...

They're so wrapped up in their own lives.

Justine and Archer, who's one of the parents of a missing kid, do kind of figure out... They don't figure out the mystery, but they figure out where the kids are, right? They track down the witch's lair.

Which one of the hilarious characters is this... Is it Jesse, the drug addict? And he's the one who finds the kids. So like, it is terrifying, but it's funny that you have the least reliable adult who actually solves the mystery. And he solves it. Because James, because he's running, because he's breaking into the house and stealing the silverware, and he runs across the kids. That's one of those darkly funny things I did enjoy.

What an incredible scene that was. I mean, just very funny and very scary at the same time. So anyway, I kind of lost my train of thought, but...

I'm sorry.

It is... It is the kid who stops the evil. It doesn't look like... I mean, at the time that he stops the witch, the witch is about to kill off both of the last remaining adults who might be able to help him. They aren't winning. They're not going to save him. The only sense in which they contribute to it is they distract her, but he's the one that takes the action. They don't distract her on purpose. They distract her by nearly getting themselves killed. Right. Okay, yeah.

And I think we just need to hit the theme of this movie because I think it's the other part that's upsetting, but once I realized this was the theme, the movie became less upsetting for me. And I think the theme here is that it's no coincidence that what happens is a bunch of small kids go missing from a school. So it's not unlike what would happen in a school shooting, and it is an effort to re-create the kind of horror and tragedy, an event like that happens, in another context. And this is why, so if anybody asks me why I like horror movies or genre movies, the best of them, right, always take something that is unspeakable or difficult to talk about or a tough moral problem, change its context, and then speak openly about it. And that's what this movie does so well.

I agree. Man, this movie opens with a gut punch because you see imagery. It's really clearly designed to evoke that school shooting imagery. There's like a memorial outside the, like a remembrance memorial outside the school. And I mean, we've all seen this is secret into all of our brains, right? We've seen from countless news stories over the years. And I think you're right, John. I mean, what, I don't know. Weapons seems like a movie that is less, like commenting on something like school shooting and more processing or documenting, like the experience of living in times where these events happen, right?

So, and I think about this with my kids, even though they're in college now, like, I just imagine, like when you and I were in elementary school, nobody ever thought about this, right? But now my kids have to go to school and it's normal.

Yeah, it's, and I mean, if this movie is, quote, saying anything, you know, I wonder if it's that, I mean, Alex has to save himself, and it's terrible that he has to do that, and it damages him horribly. And, you know, when I just, I'm sorry, this is, it is difficult to talk about because like every parent, I imagine, I have gotten at least one, you know, text or email from the school saying, hey, there is an incident right now, we've locked it down. And thank God, my, none of my kids have ever been involved or anywhere near an actual school shooting. But the things have happened that freaked the school out, and they out of an abundance of caution, they locked it down. And the emotions you feel, even when you are pretty sure this is going to turn into a false alarm or not a big deal.

Right.

And the thought, I mean, when my, I don't know, I don't want to get too personal here. My, when my oldest was in high school, one year they installed like metal detectors.

Wow.

One year they got back from summer and they had installed metal detectors and that you had to go through and you had to have a clear backpack that could be seen through. And going into school was like going through an airport security line.

Yeah.

And it was really upsetting to my child. Really upsetting. And you, the emotions you feel are very strong, and they're all wrestling with each other, and they don't really have an outlet.

Right.

Right?

Because there's no easy, like these events just break communities, and there's no, and this movie doesn't really shy away from that. It offers you a few glimpses of hope, but it's essentially saying when an event like this occurs, the community is broken.

Exactly.

And it's so hard to heal. My wife was a teacher for many years, and I know many teachers. And I think one of the most things that's burning my brain is I had a woman who was an elementary teacher, like, I just asked her once, like, what is the training like? Like, what do they tell you to do? And she essentially says, you either fight or you run. If you hide, that's the worst thing you can do. And just thinking about somebody having to think about that during their workday, it just is upsetting.

It feels, you know, I don't know what the solution to all of this is. No. But it is quite apparent that people are bearing the burden of this thing that really shouldn't have to bear the burden, right?

Yes.

It's like teachers who did not go to school so that they could have to think about this, you know? It's our kids that like, you know, every time your kid walks to a metal detector, that's a little bit more of their childhood, you know, worn down, I think.

And I think what I don't, yeah, and I don't think the movie is making a huge, I mean, I think it's making a point, right? It's casting light on it, but I think what it's really saying is, look at the burden these kids have to bear in the form of Alex, right? Of all the things that they need to worry about in our modern world, and how the adults don't seem to be able to figure it out.

Yeah. So, hey, John, I want us to close this discussion by going through, I think this is, I want, this is, I'm gonna ask you if this is a zombie movie or a movie with zombies in a few minutes, but I want us to close with those questions. Before we do, though, can we just lighten the mood, I think, by talking about the final scene of this movie? Can you just describe what happened? And so I was a gog at the screen at what I was watching.

It is crazy. So at the height of the end of the movie, what Alex has figured out to do is that what he's got to do is free the kids from the spell, because the kids will be enraged and take out the witch. Right?

Well, he figures out the mechanism the witch uses to target somebody for her zombie's lethal attention.

Yes, and he figures out the method. So his parents are literally trying to smash through the bathroom door, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. And he is hurriedly, but he's doing it with such patience. Casting the spell, conducting the ritual, he pricks his thumb with blood, and what he's got to do is do the whole thing and then snap the stick that contains the spell, and the spell will be gone. And he does that, and it's like a fire hose, and the witch realizes the second the spell is broken, and she just goes, oh dear. And the end of the movie is this, she sprints out the door, she's like 100 years old, and she starts sprinting around the neighborhood, crashing through people's dens and stuff. Well, this pack of absolutely rabid children are chasing her, and they don't go through the door. It's somebody's three-season room, and there's a door, but the kids, the stunt people who are the kids, jump through windows, just go like a beeline for her. Just like other weapons in this movie, you tried to kill other people, like this unstoppable savage force, and they chase down this old woman, and it's just filled with these people going, what the hell is going on here? Like a guy mowing his lawn.

And they're smashing through people's living rooms.

Yeah, people eating their breakfast.

Going through the windows, breaking down doors. You're just bee-lining for this witch as she runs.

And there's this one scene where the guy mowing his lawn in the distance just sees this woman from like 200 yards away, and she's just screaming and running across, and she cuts through his vision. And then this pack of rabid children follow her, and you're like, what is happening? And they eventually grab her and just tear it to pieces. It's gross.

It's super gross, yes.

But that kills the spell, and boom, people are released. And it really depended on how long you were under the spell. So, for example, Josh Boland's character was captured under the spell for like 10 minutes, so he's fine. But the people who had been under it longer, those are the ones who have more serious impacts.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, like we said, it's just shot in a way. I don't know if it's like-

It's so matter of fact, it feels like, you know what I was thinking when you shot it? It feels like a suburban movie. It feels like it's in the suburbs, like aggressively. And so when these weird things happen, he doesn't switch to like fast zooms and closeups on the chasing kids and stuff. He has the same framing and pace of the mundane suburban world, except for now it's filled with rapid children and sprinting witches. Like, yeah.

And there is a, I don't even know if it, if funny isn't the right word, but like when you're just-

You have to laugh though.

When you're faced with something, you really, I really didn't know what to make of what I was watching. And my only place I could retreat to was laughter. And I wasn't the only one in the theater who had a huge but slightly nervous grin on their face when, during this final scene, so.

Yeah, I would use the word absurd. The whole thing felt absurd. And you're like, okay. And I think you can't have another response. I think laughter is the only way you could watch that.

Okay, so hey John, let's wrap this up with our wrap up questions. These are, if you are a regular Zombie Strains listener, you know that at the end of every episode, we ask a series of questions about the zombies and what we learn from them, where they fit into sort of the legacy of zombies in film. And we just try to contextualize each film in the zombie canon. So let's do that here. So John, in Weapons, is there a hero party?

Yes. It's Julie Garner and Archer, Josh Brolin's character, mostly, with Alex as like a reluctant member because he's trying to hide. But for sure, there's a hero party.

Yes.

There's also this cop who doesn't really feel like he's part of the hero party. Great performance, but I think it's the two of them that really are the party with Alex.

Agreed. And how does that party do? How many survive?

Well, both of them, but barely. Josh Brolin, in fact, gets put under a spell at the end and almost kills Justine's character, Julie Garner's character Justine. So they almost kill each other, right? Which is loved ones turning against you kind of business, which this movie is full of, but sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.

For sure. Yes. I mean, they survive because someone else saves them, not through their own collect or ingenuity. Correct. All right. How are zombies? Oh, is there a zombie horde in this movie?

There is a hilarious teeny tiny zombie horde. Like it sounds like we were just talking about how earnest and depressing this movie was. Having your zombie horde be 17 third graders, you have to see the movie. It is just bizarre and laughter is the only response you can have. So yes, there's a massive horde of fast moving zombies. They just happen to all be under five feet tall.

Yes. All right. What type of zombie strain are we dealing with here, John?

So these are mystical zombies controlled by a zombie master way back to the roots of the genre.

Yeah.

There's no mention of voodoo. There's no, it's not said in the Caribbean. In fact, aggressively, they don't name the, it's just like a Midwestern town. They don't say where it is. They don't, you know, they want it to be anywhere USA.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And there is this stuff, the little rituals that the witch does to create her zombies would be at home in a movie, like an old zombie movie, like white zombie or other movies. Although they never mentioned zombie and they don't tie it to any sort of real world religion or even magical magic. It's just fairy tale, evil magic, essentially. For sure. And specifically, yeah, so these are living zombies, which is something that has really gone out of style, I think, in recent decades, but was much more common, as we've learned, in the early decades of the zombie movies.

But what I think is interesting is I think there are a lot of zombie movies. I feel like zombies, like it's a flow, right? Like early 2000s, a huge spike, back down 2010s, huge spike. And then we've been sort of drifting down, but now we're seeing things like this in The Gorge, which are like zombie movies with new rules. You know what I mean? Or in this case, pulling out old rules, so.

Yeah, I mean, this is something we'll need to discuss in the context of this podcast more generally. But I do feel like when you have a show like Walking Dead, completely dominate this genre for almost a decade, right? It does whatever you think of Walking Dead and its various spin-offs. I do think it has set us up for, like, let's do something different with zombies. For sure. In this case, it's intentionally or not reaching back to some of the earliest types of zombies, which, as it turns out, are quite different from your Walking Dead, shambling, groaning, you know, dead people, so.

Yeah, and I don't know anything about Zach Craiger, but I would not be surprised if you told me he was hooked on old horror movies.

Yeah. I only know he's a, he's a, he did some comic, he did comic sketches.

Horror and comedy, every time, I think the modern realization about horror is that they're very closely linked, and comedy works well with it.

And John, by the way, I think that hot dog scene is a reference to one of his comedy sketches.

Oh, really?

If you just go on YouTube and search for his name, and then hot dog sketch or something, I think you'll, I think you'll be pleased by what you find.

I kind of love that, and I kind of hope he like, just like the Wilhelm screen, he puts in a weird shot of hot dogs in every one of his movies.

I know I need to go rewatch Barbarian and see if there's a shot of hot dogs in there. Okay. Let's see, how are the zombies in this, in weapons destroyed or killed?

They can be killed by conventional means. In fact, the cop gets turned into a zombie and gets shot in the head. So you can kill them. They're just hard to put down. They have no sense of self-preservation.

Yes. He's subjected to... So the zombies we see killed are shot in the head. It's possible that simply doing enough regular physical damage to them would also bring them down. I think if you just made them unable to move, you could pretty effectively deal with them. You could damage them. They just don't react in one memorable moment, as Justine is dragging a peeler over...

A potato peeler.

Yes.

Also, there's a hilarious scene at the end where archers, like James, the junkie, has become a zombie, and he keeps attacking the archer. He's like 100 pounds soaking wet, and Josh Boland's this big, huge guy. So he keeps knocking him down, and then James just pops back up and goes, ah, and runs at him again. He knocks him down again, ah, like.

And again, in that, is this funny or is this scary? I'm not sure. Exactly. Okay, John, let's talk about, normally, we would ask if there are any zombie firsts. Like, if there's anything brand new that's zombie related, I think that is going to be awfully hard for us to discuss.

Yeah, because there's so many.

There's a lot of decades we haven't covered yet. So I'm going to skip that for now, but I do want to talk about your four pillars of the zombie genre, and let's ask ourselves how many of these appear in Weapons. John, is there an apocalypse in this movie?

There is not a global apocalypse in the sense for which this question is designed. But you could say there's an epidemic of school shootings, and that's the context in which this takes place. So I'll give a tentative yes.

Yes, and in this way, too, the local scale of this feels like a little bit of a throwback to those early zombie movies from the thirties where it's about just a small kind of enclosed community of people that get into trouble for reasons. They get into trouble. There's a lot more going on because it is obviously reflecting the very national issue of school shootings. It does have, anyway, I'll stop babbling here. John, is there contagion in this movie?

No.

Okay. And John, are there tough moral choices in this movie?

It's nothing but. Alex, and Alex has to make most of them. This poor little boy, but yes, for sure.

Tell us about him.

He has to choose between his parents and his schoolmates, one of whom is a bully, and so he loves his parents, and so he has to make a choice to save my parents, to keep this witch from killing my parents. I have to turn all my classmates into zombies. And he makes a series of choices like that throughout. Yeah, sorry. He makes a series of choices like that throughout the movie.

Agreed. And there's a lot of other choices in this movie. This movie is about everyone making choices, and they're not all like quote tough moral choices, but they are all moral choices, and some of them are good choices that lead to kind of good results, and others of them are very bad choices that make things worse.

Yeah, if you're looking for a movie with characters that are sort of cookie cutter, one-dimensional heroes or villains, this is not your movie, except for Gladys the Witch, who is a one-dimensional monster.

Yeah. And lastly, John, does this movie feature loved ones turning against you? Yes.

Over and over and over. It's very upsetting.

Yep. Okay, John, our final questions that we ask then, well, I guess I'll pause here and say, is there anything that you wanted to call out here that we haven't touched on because we're about to wrap up?

No, I think we've covered it pretty well.

All right. John, would you and I survive in this zombie world?

Not if we were a target of the Witch Gladys. I think I'm too slow moving and not resourceful. So, no. Now, I have one advantage. I'm bald, so she couldn't steal my hair to turn me into a zombie. But other than that, yeah, I think I'd be in trouble.

And if a pack of feral kids got sick on you, I would not be-

I could barely jog much less sprint like this 100-year-old witch. They'd be all over me. It'd be over.

John, is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

That is a tough one. I'm going to say it's a zombie movie, even though they don't say zombie.

It does. So I think that this secretly is a zombie movie.

Right. You just can't say zombie anymore. Yeah. Because now there's like a funny Disney movie about zombies. That's like a musical or something. I don't even know. So zombies have jumped the shark, but you still want to- but they still can make zombie movies like The Gorge and this one and just not call them zombies.

And they really are working hard at not saying the word zombie. And even like reviewers don't refer to them as zombies. Like, I think this movie is, you know, it's really pitching itself. I don't think they want you- partly they don't want to spoil the surprise because the fact that there are zombies in it is the big spoiler.

But also, like in the modern context, I bet they don't see them that way. I think we're just broken by the fact that we watch all these zombie movies from the 30s and we can make a clear path between the two.

Yeah. All right. And John, last question we ask is, do you recommend this movie? First, do you recommend it generally to anyone who enjoys movies? And secondly, do you recommend it specifically to the legions of zombie-loving freaks that listen to this podcast? Yeah.

So that's a yes and a yes. But if our warnings about how upsetting the Kids in Jeopardy stuff is, you need to know who you are. Some people just, I know several people who just couldn't handle that. I could barely handle it. So your mileage may vary, but it's a good movie and for Zombie fans for sure.

Yeah, I'm going to echo that. It's well worth watching if you are up to watching it. You'll enjoy it. And if you're a Zombie fan, I would like to suggest that this might be your ticket to discovering some of the joys of really old school zombies.

Yeah, of changing the rules a little bit.

Yeah.

They're feral, they're destructive, but they're not cannibals. They're just murderous. So the rules are twisted or changed a little bit, but it's, so yes, I agree.

And I don't want to belabor this point too much, but John, if someone were to watch this and say, I kind of like this take on zombies, they're living people controlled by an evil sorcerer, where the terror of it is the horror of becoming a zombie, of losing your free will. What of the movies we've watched in the early decades of zombie films, like what's a movie or two you might suggest that they check out?

Yeah, so Revenge of the Zombies, in which John Carradine is turning people into zombies with an orchid found in the swamp. The horror of his wife being a zombie and not wanting to be is pretty great, and that might be good, though I think the best one is I walked with a zombie. I mean, that's just one of the best early movies we saw. I will throw in White Zombie there because there is those compelling scenes about the zombie workers in the sugar mill. And once you've seen Weapons and sort of realized that it's about the horror of being a zombie, rather than being attacked by a zombie, then White Zombie makes more sense.

Yeah, those are the movies I would pick as well. All right, John, that's all I've got on Weapons. You want to close us out here?

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