What Does the Floating Gun in ‘Weapons’ Actually Mean?

Midway through Weapons, Archer (James Brolin) has a vision.

Some time after his son and all but one of his classmates leave their homes at 2:17 a.m. before vanishing, Archer, in a dream sequence, sees a massive assault rifle floating above a house. Between the cartridge and the barrel is a digital clock that reads 2:17.

Zach Cregger, who wrote and directed Weapons, told Variety that the film—widely seen as an allegory for a school shooting—was inspired the death of a friend. And while Cregger acknowledged that the floating gun is significant, he wouldn’t assign a single meaning to it.

“It’s a very important moment for me in this movie, and to be frank with you, I think what I love about it so much is that I don’t understand it,” Cregger said. “I have a few different ideas of what it might be there for, but I don’t have the right answer.”

Instead, the director wants audiences to draw their own conclusions.

“I like the idea that everyone is probably going to have their own kind of interaction or their own relationship with that scene, whether they don’t give a shit about it and it’s boring, or whether they think it’s some sort of political statement, or whether they think it’s just cool,” he said.