The Rifle in the Sky: Unpacking the Bigger Allegory in Weapons

Exploring the real meaning behind the rifle in the sky - and the many ‘weapons’ in Zach Cregger’s Weapons.

If you haven’t seen Zach Cregger’s new psychological masterpiece Weapons yet, proceed with caution - spoilers ahead.

After seeing Weapons this weekend, the question I keep getting asked the most is “what was up with that rifle in the sky?”

During a dream sequence in the first third of the film, Josh Brolin’s character Archer has a vision where he supposedly finds his son in a seemingly innocent house in his neighborhood. While looking at the house from across the street, a giant rifle (likely an AR-15) begins to materialize in the cloudy sky above, slowly forming into a complete weapon with the “2:17” time stamp glowing on the barrel.

It’s an interesting moment that I thought might lead us in a different direction than the film eventually did, but one that seems to have confused most audiences. For me, I see it as a much larger part of the overall symbolism of the film. It isn’t just the rifle as a strange one-off moment. It’s many things together in the film that all point to one thing - the “weapons” that terrorize America’s children every day.

When I saw the rifle, I connected with its symbolism and understood it immediately. When a class of third graders goes missing in America, many viewers like myself instantly associate the imagery of a school community in mourning with the worst tragedy that can be considered uniquely American - school shootings. And what’s the most commonly used weapon in these shootings? The AR-15 rifle we saw in the sky.

The floral memorial in front of the school, mourning parents trying to contend with what happened to their kids, the police and their failure to protect the children - it’s all a story we have sadly seen way too many times as Americans. Maybrook Elementary might as well have been Sandy Hook. It’s devastating, and it’s impossible to watch Weapons without having that thought in the back of your head. In this movie a mystical witch might have taken the children, but in the real world this type of story is far too common.

If this was a one-off attempt at making the allegory that this movie is about school shootings, it’s a clumsy one. To deliberately place the weapon of choice in these tragedies in a key sequence as large as the big screen we’re watching on, and never mention it again? It’s too on the nose. It’s sloppy, and unimaginative. For that reason, I don’t think that’s why it’s there. I have too much faith in Cregger to think that’s the decision that was made.

Rather, you have to look at it as part of a much larger picture. In this movie, we see the imagery of the rifle, we see a young man dealing with addiction, likely heroin or fentanyl based on the needles. We see a family member taking advantage of a child, and we hear about the effects of alcoholism and DUIs throughout the movie. We see school leadership who choose to ignore issues in their school. We see police corruption and violence. There are a lot of elements here that point to the unsafe environments our children can sometimes find themselves in.

Weapons is about all of the different types of “weapons” that American kids deal with. It wasn’t just the rifle. Maybe that was just Archer’s greatest fear for his own child, manifesting in his dream. It’s the needles and the drugs. The abusive family members. The failures of police and leadership to protect our children. The alcoholism - on the rise in the US, especially in the 35-54 age group.

We are failing kids right now in America, and that’s where I see the allegory in Weapons. It isn’t as simple as a school shooting metaphor. I don’t think the 2:17 time refers to the number of members of the US House who voted on gun reform as some other theories have stated. they actually voted to pass that bill, so even though it failed in the Senate, it was a step in the right direction. It wouldn’t make sense to call that out as a negative here, although that is a weird coincidence. I believe 2:17 is just a creepy time, right in the middle of the night, that goes well with the story.

The bigger focus should be on the fact that kids are going missing, being hurt in safe places like schools and at home, and the people who are supposed to protect them are failing far too often, from politicians to school administrators to law enforcement.

So yeah, the rifle in the sky is a striking moment. It will confuse some people and be written off as a sloppy attempt at basic symbolism. But the more I sat with this movie, the more I realized it actually tied in to the bigger picture. As The Offspring put it, The kids aren’t alright - and Weapons knows it.