Since it hit theatres, Zack Cregger’s new horror movie has been stirring up a storm online. But not just for its chilling scares, but for the puzzles Weapons drops on horror fans, especially around Aunt Gladys (played by Amy Madigan). If you’ve been scratching your head over who she really is, what she wants, and why she’s so terrifyingly in control, you’re not alone. Cregger finally pulled back a little bit of the curtain on Gladys’s backstory, and it’s far from your typical horror trope.
It seems Aunt Gladys isn’t just some spooky witch showing up out of nowhere. She’s a force feeding on the life energy of a small town, starting with Alex Lilly’s parents and then moving on to school kids. Gladys claims to be his mother’s aunt, but things get dark pretty fast as she uses witchcraft to put Alex’s parents in a vegetative state and manipulates Alex into helping her snatch the children from his classroom.
But you already knew all that, right?
Well, Cregger opened up to Vanity Fair about how Gladys’s witchcraft is really a metaphor for alcoholism, which is something he experienced growing up. He said, “The last chapter of this movie is straight-up autobiographical. That was my childhood. You live with an alcoholic parent, and there’s this inversion of the dynamic. The child can become the [caregiver].”
He described that eerie feeling perfectly: you act normal at school, but at home, you’re hiding from a zombie-like parent. That kind of emotional trauma is the real monster lurking behind the magic.
What’s also fascinating is how Cregger gave Amy Madigan two very different origin stories for Gladys to choose from, without telling him which one she picked.
The first option: Gladys is a human who turned to dark magic as a desperate way to survive an illness.
The second: she’s not human at all, but some creature trying to pass as one. That would explain her unsettling costume and behavior.
Cregger admits he doesn’t know which story Madigan preferred, leaving the character open to interpretation, and keeping fans, and probably himself, guessing.
If Amy Madigan’s name rings a bell, it’s because she’s been quietly prolific in film and TV for decades. From Field of Dreams to Carnivale and Grey’s Anatomy, she’s built a career with strong supporting roles but never quite had a breakout horror icon moment like this. Until now. With Weapons smashing box office expectations and critics buzzing, Aunt Gladys is poised to become one of the genre’s most chilling figures.
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