Bodies Turned into Weapons: An Ethical and Psychoanalytic Reading
Weapons | Zach Cregger | 2025
Fernando González y Galán

Red Universitaria de Antropología de Iberoamérica (RUAI)

Abstract

This article analyzes the film Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025) from a dual perspective: ethics and psychoanalysis. The work, centered on the disappearance of a group of schoolchildren and the control rituals carried out by a witch over the community, provides a privileged framework to reflect on the instrumentalization of the body and the transmission of collective trauma. From an ethical standpoint, the film problematizes the community’s response, which, instead of fostering solidarity, resorts to blame, exclusion, and the sacrifice of the Other. The narrative ambiguity of Weapons reinforces the need to question the boundaries between victim and perpetrator, as well as individual and collective responsibility. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the film revisits Freudian the uncanny: the familiar turned disturbing, where bodies become instruments of another’s will and rituals represent the return of the repressed. It is concluded that the true horror of the work does not lie in the supernatural, but in the fragility of human bonds in the face of violence and fear.

Keywords: weapon | community | body | responsibility | terror

This article is, for the time being, only available in Spanish: Cuerpos convertidos en armas: una lectura ética y psicoanalítica


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Volumen 16 | Nº 2

JULY 2026
July 2026 - November 2026

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