SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Weapons. If you have not yet seen the film (which is now available to stream with a HBO Max subscription), continue at your own risk!
Looking back at the many, many movies I watched in 2025, I can’t think of an ending that I loved more than the conclusion of Zach Cregger’s Weapons (a title that placed highly in CinemaBlend’s rankings of the year’s best films). The whole movie is a roller coaster ride full of twists and scares, but the big climax is a masterpiece – with Amy Madigan’s sinister Aunt Gladys forced to run for her life as she is pursued by a mob of children. It’s an utterly brilliant big screen moment that had audiences screaming in delight this summer, and only making me appreciate it more is learning how the actress forwent having a stunt double for the majority of the sequence.
Madigan spoke with Empire about her experience making the hit original horror movie and shooting its totally bonkers ending, and she explained that when you see Aunt Gladys sprinting through yards and houses in her final moments, that’s all her. There apparently were concerns about her shooting the action herself, which she could understand, but it was ultimately part of the performance that she wanted to do personally. She told the magazine,
I did all that running, which was a blast. We had a stunt person, and the powers that be were a tad nervous about me doing all these things — let’s say I slipped and smashed my face into the door or something? I said, ‘No, I can do it.’
In the third act of Weapons, Aunt Gladys is forced to flee when she suddenly finds her sinister magic used against her: young Alex (Cary Christopher) successfully executes the spell that Gladys used to kidnap all of his classmates, and he has all 17 kids turn on their captor in a murderous rage. The witch tries to get away from them by running through the neighborhood, but they eventually catch up with her and tackle her to the ground.
While the running was all Amy Madigan, she admits that she did take a backseat for one particular moment:
When I get tackled at the end and smooshed to the ground, no, I did not do that.
That being said, she was brought back into the action for Aunt Gladys’ final moments alive. When the kids catch up with her and tackle her to the ground, they quite literally tear her apart with their hands and teeth. It’s a cinematic moment of total savagery, but Amy Madigan makes it sound like it was a blast to shoot, as the young actors had fun getting some revenge on their on-screen abductor:
They were totally into it! We shot that from a million different angles, and they just kept bouncing on me and ripping me. I think they had fun.
When I spoke with Zach Cregger this summer, he told me that the sequence was exceptionally complicated to set up (after all, it does involve kids smashing through windows and doors as they chase after Aunt Gladys), and even after the movie was finished shooting, he continued to have stress nightmares for weeks. Thankfully, it was wholly worth it.
The ending of Weapons was amazing to witness with fresh eyes, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is just as delightful to witness on rewatch. The movie is now not only able to stream following its theatrical release this summer, but it’s also available for digital purchase and/or rental and is on both 4K UHD and Blu-ray.
