The film Weapons (2025) has been released; the following is a scene-by-scene, linear narration of what is shown to the viewer, describing visible events and clearly implied internal states only when the film makes them explicit through action or dialogue.

Opening sequence — classroom, late night - Interior, third-grade classroom, night. The clock reads 2:17 a.m.; fluorescent lights hum. Seventeen empty desks sit in rows. A single desk is occupied by a small boy, Alex Lilly, who stares forward with a blank expression while the rest of the room is empty and quiet.
- Cut to exterior residential streets of Maybrook, Pennsylvania: empty houses, closed curtains, the neighborhood asleep.
- Montage of the town in the immediate aftermath: parents waking, police lights arriving at homes; neighbors gathering in front yards; news vans pull up. Local children’s rooms are shown empty with beds made and toys undisturbed.
- Title card: Weapons.

Daytime — school, principal’s office - Interior, school. Principal Marcus Miller sits behind his desk as teachers and parents cluster in the hallway speaking in low, urgent voices. Justine Gandy, the children’s teacher, is interviewed by police at the school; she answers questions; the footage cuts between her face and an empty classroom.
- Outside, parents whisper and glare at Justine; themes of suspicion are visible in the townspeople’s posture and expressions. Marcus places Justine on administrative leave amid the community’s accusations that she is involved in the disappearance.

Justine’s decline — bar and apartment - Interior, a dim bar. Justine drinks alone, swiping at a phone that shows media headlines. She downs shot after shot; the bartender watches her with mild concern.
- Interior, Justine’s apartment. She collapses onto a couch in daylight, wakes disoriented, and calls Paul Morgan, her ex-boyfriend and a police officer; their dialogue is terse and strained. She presses for help finding answers; Paul is evasive. Her behavior—staggering, putting her head in her hands—visibly shows she’s sinking into alcoholism and despair as the town turns on her.

Archer introduced — home and obsession - Interior, Archer Graff’s house. Archer, father of missing boy Matthew, pins a map and children’s photos on a wall. He obsessively marks routes and times with a pen, muttering and tracing lines with a finger.
- Archer visits police and is frustrated by the lack of progress; his anger and trembling hands suggest increasing desperation. He begins to conduct his own searches, pacing through woods at dusk, calling his son’s name into the trees.

Alex’s home observed — newspapered windows - Exterior, Alex Lilly’s house, day. Justine follows Alex home after school and pulls her car up outside. She observes all the windows covered in newspaper from the sidewalk, looks up at the house, and then sees Alex’s parents moving slowly and hazily behind curtains.
- She leaves a message at school with Marcus asking for a wellness check; later she returns and falls asleep in her car in the driveway.

Night — the cutting of hair - Night, outside Alex’s house. A woman exits the house silently and approaches Justine’s parked car. She reaches in and, without a word, cuts a lock of Justine’s hair and takes it away. The camera lingers on the cut hair falling to the street and on Justine sleeping in the car unaware.

Dreams and shared imagery - Montage of Justine and Archer sleeping. Both experience the same uncanny dream imagery: children running and an odd, uncanny woman in a field. The film cross-cuts their faces as they wake troubled, indicating the dream’s shared nature.

James breaks in — basement discovery - Interior, Alex’s house at night. James, a local drug addict previously assaulted by Paul, climbs through a window or slips in a door, moving through the darkened rooms with a flashlight. He finds a basement door and descends.
- In the basement, James discovers Alex’s parents and the missing children sitting or lying in a catatonic state, arranged as if posed, their faces vacant and expressionless. He reacts with a mixture of alarm and panic, scoops up his phone, and flees the house to go to the police station.

Chase — Paul intercepts James - Exterior/streets. Paul spots James running and gives chase on foot. James darts into the woods; the camera follows him through underbrush. Paul catches James and arrests him, dragging him back to his police cruiser and placing him handcuffed in the back seat. Paul then drives to Alex’s house to investigate the break-in, leaving James handcuffed in the car.

Paul returns — James taken inside - Hours later, scene returns to the parked patrol car as Paul comes back from the house carrying a flashlight and bag. Paul opens the cruiser, drags James out, and takes him into Alex’s house. The sequence’s tone is menacing: Paul’s face is set and James is bewildered. The film shows Paul closing the house door behind them.

Interleaved chapters — background on characters - The film divides into character-focused chapters that jump back to earlier events and reveal additional context for Justine and Archer: Justine’s fraught personal history, her ex relationship with Paul, and Archer’s past that intensifies his grief and fuels his search. Scenes show Justine’s flashbacks, her interactions with other townspeople, and Archer revisiting places where his son used to play, intercut with the ongoing investigation’s progress and the town’s suspicion of Justine.

Archer’s searches — trail and repeated sightings - Archer follows a pattern: he canvasses areas outside town, walks the same trails at night, and follows footprints that appear to run in the same direction before blurring into the landscape. He attempts to triangulate where the children might have gone but fails to find a final destination, often coming up on empty fields or shuttered houses.

Tension escalates — townsfolk, conspiracies - Scenes show townspeople whispering in grocery stores, posting flyers with altered images of Justine and the missing students, and forming search parties that question and sometimes harass Justine. The film repeatedly cuts to close-ups of faces in crowds—concerned, accusatory, fearful—building a sense of communal hysteria.

Supernatural hints — the woman and ritual objects - Visuals of the uncanny woman repeat: she appears at the edge of a field, walking with a bundle of thorny branches or twigs and performing small, ritual-like gestures. The camera lingers on salt lines drawn across floors in some houses and on small thorny branches stuck into objects; these details are shown without explicit exposition but with repeated emphasis so the viewer notices them.

Confrontation at Alex’s house — the house’s true purpose - Interior, Alex’s house at night. The film returns to the house now under heavier scrutiny. Paul, Justine, Archer, James, and other characters converge on the property. Doors are forced, rooms are searched; the camera repeatedly shows salt lines on the floor and newspaper-covered windows.
- Gladys (the woman from dreams, identified by name in later scenes) is revealed to be present in the house performing actions that have controlled or immobilized the missing children and their parents. Her movements are calm and methodical as other characters move through the house in panic.

Ritual activation and trap — salt triggers and violence - In the climactic sequence, Gladys rigs a trap: salt lines on the floor are shown as a deliberate defensive grid, and thorny bundles are placed around rooms. When someone crosses the salt lines, an alternate version of the control spell previously used activates and causes violence to unfold.
- Justine unwittingly crosses one of the salt lines; this triggers a sudden, violent sequence in which Paul rushes at her and James is set upon Archer. The camera shows chaotic hand-to-hand combat: Paul and James attack, Archer lands repeated punches on James but cannot keep him down, and Justine scrambles to defend herself.

Killing of Paul and James — Justine’s desperate act - During the fight, Justine grabs a potato peeler in a brief, visible attempt to defend herself; it proves ineffective. She then seizes Paul’s own service weapon during the melee and shoots him, killing him; the film shows the shot, Paul’s body collapsing, and the immediate shift in the room’s dynamic.
- Afterward, Justine turns the gun on James and fires, killing or incapacitating him enough that Archer can reach the basement. The camera lingers on the bodies and on Justine’s still-shaking hands holding the gun.

Finding the children — the basement revealed - Archer forces open the basement door and descends into dim, claustrophobic space. He finds the missing children in the basement in the same catatonic state previously discovered by James: they are present, physically alive but vacant, arranged and motionless. Archer searches through the children for his son Matthew.
- Instead of finding Matthew, Archer finds Gladys in the basement; the scene reveals that she has been the orchestrator of the disappearances and the one maintaining the children’s state. The film shows a sudden reversal as Gladys is confronted, not with exposition but with direct physical presence among the recovered children.

Alex’s counter — mimicking the ritual - Meanwhile the film follows Alex, who has been watching Gladys and the adults. Alex deliberately crosses a salt line that was intended to manipulate others, causing his parents—who had been functioning as Gladys’s guardians—to turn and attack or to be triggered by the ritual.
- Alex uses the connecting rooms and house layout to evade them; he reaches Gladys’s room and takes one of the thorny branches she uses for her spells. The film shows him holding the branch and repeating physical motions he had observed Gladys perform earlier, following the exact steps of the ritual sequence he had watched.

Ritual inversion and its effect - Using the thorny branch, Alex performs a sequence of gestures in a bathroom while barricading himself inside; the camera shows him repeating the steps precisely as the adults and children outside are affected. The motions he performs cause the thorny twigs to turn against Gladys: the branch seems to animate or to redirect the same controlling magic onto Gladys herself, causing her to be attacked by the children or otherwise undone by her own method.
- The film depicts a physical, visible unraveling: Gladys’s expressions change, her control falters, and the children’s catatonia is disrupted.

Aftermath — children returned but haunted - Exterior and interior shots show the children reunited with families and sitting in living rooms and at kitchen tables; parents hold or stare at their children as they begin to wake, but the children’s faces are blank, vacant, and unresponsive—the film repeatedly lingers on their static expressions to indicate lasting trauma.
- In earlier-on actions and later shots, the film signals that although the children are physically back, nothing will be the same; the opening’s quiet blankness reappears in the children’s demeanor.

Fates of main characters — who lives and who dies - Justine Gandy: survives. She kills Paul and James during the climactic struggle and is alive at the end, holding the weight of what happened and visibly shaken.
- Paul Morgan: dies. He is shot by Justine during the house confrontation.
- Archer Graff: survives the climax. He reaches the basement and finds the children; he does not die on-screen, though he is left with the emotional aftermath and the discovery of Gladys instead of his son Matthew at first.
- Alex Lilly: survives. He actively undoes Gladys’s control using the thorny branch and is instrumental in freeing the children.
- Gladys: is neutralized or undone by Alex’s inversion of her ritual; the film shows her loss of control and being defeated in the house confrontation.
- James: dies or is fatally incapacitated—Justine shoots him during the melee, after which Archer can access the basement.
- The missing children: found alive in the basement in a catatonic state; they survive physically but are left blank and traumatized when returned to their families.

Closing images — trauma and unresolved change - Final scenes show the children back home with family members, their faces vacant; Justine and Archer stand or sit amid the townspeople, each character bearing silent aftermaths of violence and loss. The camera pulls back on the town at dusk; while the physical mystery of the children’s absence has been resolved on screen, the film leaves visible traces—people’s expressions, lingering shots of salt lines and thorny branches—that imply enduring consequences.

Notes on structure and presentation - The film is presented in chapters and revisits events from multiple perspectives, intercutting to reveal new details as scenes repeat.
- Supernatural or ritual mechanics are shown through repeated visual motifs (salt lines, thorny branches, the woman/Gladys) rather than lengthy exposition.

This narration describes the events visible in the film and states the on-screen outcomes for the primary characters, including who lives and who dies, as those events are presented to the viewer.

The seventeen children from Justine Gandy's class suddenly fled their homes and disappeared under mysterious circumstances, apparently abducted by an unseen force. The film explores this unexplained event as a central mystery, with the children found later in a catatonic state in a basement, suggesting a supernatural or sinister cause behind their disappearance.

Alex Lilly is the only student from Justine's class who did not disappear that night and was the only one to show up to class the next morning. His unique status raises questions about why he was spared and what role he plays in the unfolding events. The film shows Alex's parents in a hazy state and his house covered in newspaper, hinting at something unusual about his family and his connection to the mystery.

Justine Gandy, the teacher of the missing children, becomes a suspect in the community's eyes and is placed on leave by the principal. She struggles with depression and alcoholism while trying to uncover the truth. The town weaponizes its hatred toward her, suspecting her involvement or knowledge about the disappearances, which adds to her personal trauma and isolation.

Archer Graff is the father of one of the missing children, Matthew. Frustrated by the police's ineffective investigation, Archer conducts his own search for his son. His storyline intersects with Justine's, and he experiences dreams about the missing children and an uncanny woman, which ties into the film's supernatural elements.

Paul Morgan, a police officer and Justine's ex-boyfriend, and James, a local drug addict, become entangled in a violent confrontation influenced by a mysterious woman named Glattis. Paul and James are under Glattis's influence and attack anyone who threatens her. Justine and Archer are forced to kill Paul and James to survive. The film depicts a salt line set by Glattis that triggers attacks when crossed, adding a supernatural layer to the conflict.

The movie Weapons (2025) is not family friendly and is rated R due to strong bloody violence, grisly images, pervasive profanity, some sexual content, and drug use, making it inappropriate for children or sensitive viewers.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects include:

• Frequent and explicit bloody violence, including intense confrontations, physical assaults, and graphic injury depictions.
• Disturbing imagery related to the disappearance of children, which is a central and emotionally heavy theme.
• Strong language, with multiple uses of harsh profanity throughout the film.
• Brief sexual content and implied nudity in tense or distressing contexts.
• Drug use depicted among secondary characters, often linked to despair and chaos.
• A grim, oppressive tone with psychological themes of grief, guilt, paranoia, and societal collapse.

The film’s horror and mystery elements create a chilling atmosphere with unsettling scenes, especially in the final chapter, which may cause discomfort or distress. Overall, Weapons is intended for mature audiences and is unsuitable for children or those sensitive to graphic violence and mature themes.