One easy-to-miss detail in Weapons makes Josh Brolin’s character so much more fascinating. In the horror film, Brolin plays Archer, a grieving father who is desperate to find his missing son who, along with sixteen of his classmates, ran away and disappeared into the night at 2:17 one morning. Only one kid in the class, Alex, didn’t go missing.

When we first meet Archer in Weapons, we learn that he is a father who is in deep grief over the loss of his son, Matthew. The movie smartly shows ways to make audiences feel for him, whether its revealing he can’t sleep anywhere but his son’s bed or relentlessly searching for his son. Even if his methods can be extreme, his reasoning is understandable.

After Archer’s chapter in Weapons, viewers desperately want him to be reunited with his son. By the end of Weapons, Archer, with the help of Julia Garner’s Justine, solves the mystery and learns where the kids ran off to. The reunion between Brolin’s character and his son is ultimately a chance to give this story a somewhat happy ending.

Even if the real conclusion is anything but, Cregger clearly put a lot of thought into the film and its characters. One specific detail regarding Brolin’s character in Weapons makes it all the more impressive.

Audiences Usually Wouldn’t Root For A Character Like Archer

One of the surprises Cregger delivers comes with the ending of the film showing Alex’s perspective, which reveals that Matthew consistently bullied him at school. Not much emphasis is placed on these scenes and the dynamic between Alex and Matthew, but the latter is clearly not a character that movie fans would typically root for.

In fact, Matthew seems like a stereotypical bully who people usually hate in movies. Matthew’s aggressive behavior seems to be a result of Archer’s parenting style. In one of the most emotional scenes in Weapons, Archer apologizes to his son for not showing him enough love while talking to him in a dream.

Even though this interaction between the father and son is not actually real, it reveals that Archer feels immense guilt for how he has raised Matthew. Just like Matthew, audiences wouldn’t typically root for a character like Archer in a movie. While Matthew is a stereotypical bully, Archer is the distant father who is an awful influence.

It’s even heavily hinted that Archer is the one who writes “witch” in red paint on Justine’s car, which proves that he can be quite the bully, as well.

Beyond Cregger’s writing and Brolin’s heart-torn performance, a major reason this is effective is due to Weapons‘ story structure. By not having the movie entirely be shown from Alex’s perspective, audiences get a chance to see Archer’s heartbreak and determination, not just his H๏τ-headed and forceful ways.

If the film were entirely told from Alex’s perspective, there would still be some level of empathy from viewers towards all the missing kids and their families, but that would typically be less so for a school bully figure like Matthew and his sometimes overly angry father.

By switching up the film’s structure, Cregger masterfully makes Archer someone audiences care for and want to see “win” by finding his son. It’s a major accomplishment that Weapons convinces audiences to root for characters like Archer and Matthew by the end based on how they otherwise could’ve been portrayed.