One Weapons Star Insisted On Performing Their Own Death Scene Stunts

If you saw "Weapons" when it released in August, you know that Zach Cregger's second feature film ends with an absolutely ridiculous (and frankly hilarious) chase sequence. As it turns out, the star of that sequence, Amy Madigan — who deserves an Academy Award nod for her turn as the movie's antagonist Gladys — insisted on performing as many of the stunts involved with this sequence as she could.

Madigan — who, as of this writing, is a respectable 75 years old — told Entertainment Weekly's "The Awardist" podcast that she did end up preparing quite a lot for the climax of "Weapons," where Gladys is chased and subsequently torn apart by 17 schoolchildren she was holding captive for energy-stealing purposes. (I'll circle back to all of that in a second; don't worry.) "Being told you're gonna be ripped apart is one thing. Actually framing it and shooting it and doing it..." Madigan admitted before saying that she went to great lengths to make friends with the child actors and help them feel comfortable around her so that they could give the scene their all. "But it really started with that whole running sequence, which I really had a blast doing," she continued.

Cregger apparently didn't want his leading lady to sprint through lawns screaming as the children are hot on her heels, but Madigan stood her ground. "'Oh, no, I'm running," Madigan apparently told Cregger. "'I'm definitely running. I'm doing it.' So all of that, just revving it up that the payoff, I thought. was great. It's like, yeah, just rip her apart." In a separate interview, Cregger confirmed that this is precisely how it went down.

In a separate interview with IndieWire, Zach Cregger discussed the challenges of shooting the entire chase sequence, noting that it took approximately three days and that they didn't even get as many takes as he'd hoped, due to the rapid pace of production on "Weapons." Discussing all of those running shots, including one where Amy Madigan's Gladys is running through strangers' houses, followed by the horde of children that Cregger says they shot around five different times. "That was really Amy [Madigan] for all of that," he clarified. "That was really Amy running that."

According to Cregger, he did hire a stuntwoman, as any director would, but Madigan took umbrage with that. "We had a stuntwoman there, and when Amy saw the stuntwoman in her outfit, she was like, 'What is she doing here?'" Cregger, understandably, said he didn't want one of his stars risking her safety: "And I was like, 'Amy, if you fall down, we're going to have a real problem. I need you for the rest of the movie, so I'm going to have her run.' And she was like, 'No, you're not having her run.'"

In the end, Madigan got her way; as Cregger put it, "Amy ran that whole thing." There is, apparently, one shot that involves that stuntwoman, though. "The only thing that's not Amy is when she gets tackled because we did like a Texas switch," Cregger revealed. "Amy runs into the doorway, and as we follow the girl out the window, the stuntwoman goes running into the front yard, so the girl tackles the stuntwoman. But it's just that one moment." Now let's talk about that unbelievably frantic, strangely fun, and fascinating scene.

Here's how we even get to the point where Gladys gets absolutely merked by a bunch of third-graders. At the beginning of "Weapons," we're told in voiceover that one night, at 2:17 in the wee hours of the morning, 17 children flee their homes and run in a super-distinctive way towards a shared and unknown point before vanishing. Gladys had cast a spell using an odd tree she carried to summon the children; basically, she used a branch from the tree, paired it with possessions belonging to her intended targets, sacrificed her own blood to the branch, and then broke it, turning her targets into weaponized beings. The children then hang out in the basement of the Lily home, where their only remaining un-possessed classmate Alex (Cary Christopher), whose family home Gladys has invaded to cast her evil spells, resides with his possessed parents.

Alex eventually figures out Gladys' magic trick and does it against her, sending the 17 children after her and filling them with bloodlust. In that IndieWire piece, Zach Cregger noted that this scene was also made using practical effects ... and the kids loved it. As he revealed:

"Even Gladys getting shredded. I think her eye blinks while her face is getting pulled apart, and that's VFX, but everything else is like... we had a dummy with hoses inside, and the kids pulled the dummy apart and got sprayed with fake blood. They were having the time of their little lives."

It's a fitting ending for such a delightful but evil character, and Amy Madigan agrees. "I think some people find it funny," she told "The Awardist." "Some people are like, 'I don't know about that ending.' Some people find it justice has prevailed, so that's good."

"Weapons" is streaming on HBO Max now.