On Weapons & Its Gay Stuff

Nobody likes a killjoy yet I've found myself falling into that role over and over and over again when it's come (mostly) to horror movies in 2025; I just haven't been on consensus this year. God forbid. But it seems to've been my review of writer-director Zach Cregger's Weapons, which stormed the box office this past weekend, which seems to've annoyed people the most... even though I gave the movie a mostly good review! I gave it a fresh Red Apple on that dastardly Tomatometer! I just have several nits to pick with the film that seem to really be killing people's joy, if the comments on said post are to be believed, and there's one I really want to address since it's a subject I've spent most of my writing career (lol "career") contemplating. 

Annoyed at the should-know-better homosexual’s comment on my review saying we fought for the equality to be played as weirdo jokes and get murdered in horror movies so I’ll probably go off on that at MNPP tomorrow, stay tuned!

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) August 10, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Yeah that's the one. Specifically people seem annoyed with the following passage from my review (and yes I'm diving head-first into SPOILERS at this point so beware if you haven't seen the movie and care):

"And oh right lest we forget there’s the homophobic portion of our evening’s entertainment, the chapter involving Marcus (Benedict Wong, great and not in the least at fault for the way these scenes are framed). He’s the school’s gay principal and he’s who, along with his hissing stereotype of a partner (they love weiners and have Mickey and Minnie t-shirts, haha!), the film really relishes giving a heftily violent what-for. Killing your gays is so in y’all."

Marcus' partner is named Terry and I honestly don't know if I'll see a more offensive-to-me image in the movies this year than the one of Terry mincingly holding up two boxes of Fruity Pebbles in the grocery store. And that really has nothing to do with the "killing your gays" trope -- although yes I'll get to that -- it has to do with it feeling as if Weapons is actively laughing at these characters for being gay. It's not that I mind "sissies" in real life -- nobody's ever mistaken me for the captain of the football team y'all. It's that the movie thinks these gigantic queens are weird and hilarious and so fucking gay -- aren't they so fucking gay??? So many weiners! Plates and plates of weiners! High-larious!

And yes I will admit I've lost some of my humor here in 2025 on this subject. But I feel as if any sane fucking queer person should be right there alongside me in the same humorless goddamned boat. Look around. Our rights are being ripped away. Marriage Equality is probably going to be gone in the next year. Trans service members are being ripped out of service and denied retirement benefits right now, right this second, and it'll be the rest of the rainbow next. They are coming for us all with terrifying methodical swiftness and all of our systems of defense are failing.

So yeah ten years ago I also might've been making the case, as has been made in the comments on my review, that some modern version of cinematic equality sees gays getting to die in horror movies just like straight characters do. And sure, okay -- in a utopia there's something to that. Maybe just don't turn them into cartoonish stereotypes before that? Maybe we can be main characters once in awhile? And maybe don't have it be the gay characters love for one another that becomes what kills them. Weapons gives us no reason to give a shit about Marcus & Terry's relationship before Marcus is forced to murder Terry by smashing their faces together over and over again, which -- it's not a fucking stretch to see this as "men kissing men" weaponized. 

So yes -- we argued that we gays should be able to die in horror movies just like straights. It's just -- JFC did the storytellers immediately take us up on that offer, like gangbusters. In the past month I've seen (SPOILER for The Gilded Age ahead) a gay dude trampled by horses in front of his lover on The Gilded Age. I've seen a gay couple in the horror movie Together (SPOILER for Together ahead) turn out to be the weirdo freak cult leaders who've come to pervert the straight couple and turn them into non-binary monsters. And now I have seen this sequence -- in a movie I mostly liked otherwise! -- and... I dunno. I'm just pretty tired y'all. So cut me some slack if I kind of come off like this most of the time: