08/17/2025
The horror film WEAPONS is a popular hit. Which is a shame since it is also has the most homophobic take on a stereotypical gay couple since 1968’s STAIRCASE, which starred the mincing hairdresser couple Richard Burton and Rex Harrison [check it out for free on YouTube – if you dare].
For most of film history, gay men and women have been depicted as effeminate, predatory, self-hating or offensively used for comic relief. An early, often violent, death was their punishment for being different. But this is 2025. Times have long changed, and proof is in the hundreds of positive portrayals of gay men in television and in Hollywood films. So why did director Zach Cregger depict, in his otherwise quite good horror movie, WEAPONS, a cartoonish and possibly hateful portrayal of a gay couple? SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading if you haven’t seen the film yet.
When introduced, Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) is seen as a kind and supportive middle-school principal who works to fend off the anger of parents after 17 children in a single classroom disappear one night without a trace. His sexual orientation is not a factor as he protects the classroom’s teacher Justine (Julia Garner) from the mob of parents.
Fast forward to the middle of the movie and we now see Marcus shopping at a supermarket and he’s not alone but with his presumptive lover/husband Terry (Clayton Farris.) Nothing wrong with that until we see the limp-wristed Terry, in the queeniest possible way (he could be the sissy brother to Emory from Boys in the Band) prancing down the aisles gleefully picking products and asking Marcus to choose one. The final items are two kinds of cereals, what kind? Fruity Pebbles of course. I guess Froot Loops and Banana Nut Cheerios did not pay for product placement.
Later, we see the couple at home. Terry, the queenier one, is wearing a Minnie Mouse t shirt while the tougher Marcus wears a Micky Mouse t shirt. Now we know who is the top and who gets plowed. Terry is preparing a plate of food for lunch in front of the TV. What’s the main items on the plate? Seven hot dogs. I guess they could have had whole cucumbers on the plate, so one small win for the g**s. The couple is used as tension-releasing comic relief – look at these homos, aren’t they funny! Now let’s get back to the horror. And the horror does resume as a witch casts a spell on Marcus, who immediately knocks his partner to the ground and with his own head, bashes Terry’s head into a gelatinous pulp. And still under the spell, he furiously runs out of the house in search of teacher Justine, but an encounter with a fast-moving car leaves his head splattered all over the asphalt. Two queens dead in the most violent fashion.
Now this is a horror films so what’s the problem if other characters are similarly killed? Well, that’s not the case. This is not a gory film with a high death headcount. It is noteworthy that, apart from a policeman who is shot and a drug user who is killed, no other significant characters meet a violent end—except for Gladys, the sinister witch, and the two f**s. And in those deaths, only Terry, Marcus and the witch have gory demises and with all three having their brains sprayed across the ground.
Director Cregger not only uses gay men as comic relief, but through the similar head-bashing deaths, associates homosexuality with evil. Young people are going in droves to this film, and they leave the cinemas laughing at the f**s and enjoying their grisly murders. Wow. When usually liberal Hollywood viciously turns on the LGBTQ community what is next in this Trump era?
