Wrinkles and Witchcraft: Weapons’ Role in the Growing Fandom for the Elderly Villain Archetype

In a small, quiet Pennsylvania neighborhood, Archer (Josh Brolin), armed only with a phone light and a relentless drive to recover his lost son, enters the dark basement of a house that's become an epicenter of strange happenings in this sleepy town. As we’re dragged alongside Archer, searching through a pitch-black sea of deadpan, motionless children, we’re treated to one of the most striking jump scares in the film as a creature emerges from the shadows and lunges towards our protagonist. But rather than come face-to-face with a ghoul or straight from our imaginations, we’re greeted by an even more startling image: that of a hunched-over elderly woman, in her tattered robe with a maniacal grimace and wispy gray hair covering her wild eyes, appearing like a creature straight from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. Like all great jumpscares this film offers, it leaves audiences yelping, flinging popcorn in the air, and laughing in childlike giddiness as they try and catch their breath. 

Since its August 8th release date, Zach Cregger’s Weapons has risen among the ranks of classical film remakes and hero-epic sequels to become one of the most iconic horror releases of the modern decade, and for good reason: its non-linear narrative–dictated through the perspectives of numerous interacting characters–harps on ever-current notions of trauma and domestic violence through the story of seventeen children in a single teacher’s classroom who inexplicably disappear into the dead of night. All the while, a cacophony of jump scares and breath-holding moments is provided that balances between the deeply terrifying and the comically absurd. Like all great horror films, Weapons also comes with a villain whose unprecedented notoriety deems her worthy of any TikTok trend or Halloween costume; the parasitic Gladys Lilly, estranged aunt of the film’s primary child character and mastermind behind the small suburbia’s paranormal occurrences, has broken the internet as one of the most avidly discussed characters in recent cinematic fandom. 

A likely cause of her sudden popularity, critics argue, is her reliance on deception in conveying doctrinal horror-cinema antagonism. In a movie whose consternation stems from the conceited impossibility of horrendous tragedies impacting all too familiar people and places, Gladys stands as an embodiment of that very concept. Outwardly, she’s a frail, eccentric elderly woman who is tasked with caring for her nephew’s ailing parents: hardly the kind of woman you’d raise a suspecting brow towards. However, beneath the ginger curls and thick layers of eye shadow and lipstick lies a manipulative witch feeding on the life force of Maybrook, Pennsylvania’s residents in desperate preservation of her own vitality. What remains even more fascinating are the unanswered questions left lingering around Gladys’ character by the film's end. No backstory, context, or real connection to the Lilly family she encroaches upon are established. She’s a flicker of a character who departs just as hurriedly as she arrives. In the end, Gladys’ demise comes all too soon before our questions are resolved, leaving audiences with exciting avenues for the imagination to venture down in considering her character’s history. Still, despite her ambiguities, Gladys remains as distinguished and complex a villain as they come, granting her an iconicism yet to be matched by any character this year. 

Like all fame, however, Gladys’ is not one-sided. With this character, Weapons adheres itself to a growing archetypal trend that’s dominated the horror genre throughout the 21st century–one that has received just as much criticism as it has appraisal. In recent years, an increasing number of horror directors have elected for elderly personas to portray villainous roles in their films. The aged horror villain, in a broader context, is no new concept; in fact, this trope has routinely appeared throughout cinema history, with Tod Browning’s Dracula and Albert Lewin’s The Picture of Dorian Gray serving as earlier examples. Even some of the most landmark horror films–namely Rosemary’s Baby and Nightmare on Elm Street–make use of this convention. In recent decades, however, this archetype has gained considerable traction, with more and more films opting for the elderly antagonist to terrify their audience. The only difference is that these antagonists now terrify less through their associations with superhuman mysticism or monstrous disfigurement, and more with their most naturalistic, commonplace characteristics, both figuratively and literally. 

Recent directors have found satisfaction with the seasoned individual’s natural form to effectively sicken audiences, as these negative depictions of the human body, succumbed to the effects of age, incite fears of mortality in their audiences as they position their physical beings into the far more decrepit ones pictured on screen. Numerous hallmarks of 21st-century horror, such as M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, employ this device, incorporating the added detail of progression into those aged states (through either gradual breaks in a character’s psyche or the introduction of figures in less and less clothing to illustrate physical maturation) to emblemize aging as a process none are immune to. 

Furthermore, this trope is not only selected for its intrinsic shock value. With recent developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Middle-Eastern conflict, the younger generations of today are left in a position where their mortality must be considered and longevity cherished. Horror directors are well aware of these sentiments, and capitalize on this longing for youth by confronting audiences with hyper-grotesque effects of aging, and forcing viewers to consider their own forms helplessly yielded to creeping decay at a time when we find ourselves so drawn to it. 

Moreover, an inclination among directors to depict these aging processes on female bodies is widely evidenced in these films. Since the origins of filmmaking, the female figure has continuously been epitomized as an idealized symbol of refinement and attraction in cinema. By subverting these preexisting tropes, these horror films not only position themselves as revitalizing challenges to foundational cinematic paradigms but also counteract audiences’ inherent recognitions of beauty with their antithesis: withered, atrophied physical bodies stripped of their former glories. Even more terrifying are the unwarranted, physical interactions between these bodies and our own. Ti West’s X (2022), for instance, features a pivotal scene in which a nude elderly woman makes sexual advances upon a young girl while she’s asleep. This moment places audiences into the position of the victim, and adds intrusively tangible qualities to further antagonize an already dampened image of an older woman’s nude form. 

Regardless of their impressionable capabilities, backlash has been foregrounded in response to this renovated trope. With these depictions, a subsequent vilification of these same women occurs, inciting hateful sentiments towards the aged female’s appearance and outcasting these elderly women from the domain of acceptable social imaging. As a result, major feminist movements contest these movies for their antagonizing conditions and prompt film critics to seriously reflect on the adverse effects recent archetypes have left on gender equity. The popularity of these protests has even gone so far as to cause these dilemmas to become centralized within modern horror narratives as well. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, for instance, harps on this anti-movement by featuring one woman’s self-awareness in her personal vilification due to her helpless succumbing to rapid, terrifying aging. Due to the expanding prominence of these protests, no movie that adheres to this archetype is immune to criticism. Regardless of their stances, these films are subjected to scrutiny for their negative portrayals and will forever exemplify the ongoing debate of gender and feminist representation in cinema.

So how does our Gladys fit into this conversation? Within the larger dispute, detractors from the elderly archetype may diminish Weapons’ antagonist to the ranks of other negatively-casted female anti-heroes of the genre. After all, Zach Cregger spares no expense in bringing her disheveled appearance into the spotlight. In the glimpses we get at Gladys’ most natural form, we view her thin, balding hair, asymmetrical irises, and excessively thin physique with almost pitiful eyes as we fail to find any trace of life in her moribund form. Much like the aforementioned films, these physical characteristics monstrify her outward presentation, causing the moments in which we witness this more hideous, vulnerable state to be all the more terrifying. Likewise, Gladys’ motives are directly concerned with her struggle for vitality. As it would be revealed, Gladys entered Maybrook, Pennsylvania, with the intention of parasitically leeching off the suburbia’s youth to reverse her relentless decay. In countering this, Weapons implies aging as something not to be respected, but feared, as the lasting horrors the small town is subjected to culminate from one woman’s relentless strife to maintain her youth. 

Yet, few critics have called Gladys out for her negative take on the impacts of aging; in fact, given her phenomenal popularity among critics, audiences, and film buffs alike, we can accurately assume the opposite. What makes Gladys so attractive through the controversy of the elderly archetype is her amiable qualities that resonate with younger audiences. In her initial introduction, she’s far from the decrepit villain she’s later revealed to be. She’s outlandish, funny, and charismatic, sporting a colorful and bubbly personality matched only by the eccentricities of her curly red wig, densely-applied makeup, and outfits so bright that you need sunglasses as thick as hers to see them. The dichotomy in her character explores new dimensions for what the horror villain is capable of. With this humorous eccentricism comes the revolutionary notion that an effective villain does not need to rely on convoluted motives and twisted backstories to heighten their intrigue. In highlighting the diverse dichotomies a character can reach, whether that be between comical and ghastly, or any other widened range, Cregger proves that the limits of a single character’s impression can be infinite. 

In further discussing Gladys’ juxtaposition against a conventional suburban neighborhood, her popularity can be further tied to one particular demographic of the film’s audience. Queer movie-goers have taken a specific likeness towards the Gladys persona, and celebrate this likeness in various ways. A recent TikTok trend, for instance, features drag queens on the platform performing as Gladys, sporting her wig, makeup, and jewelry while mimicking her eccentric yet domineering actions with glamorous accuracy. The performativity of the Gladys persona has garnered a cult following to Weapons matched only to that of John Waters’ films or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Indeed, the dual physicality and personable characteristics of Gladys make her the idealized queer icon, who refuses to adhere to social normativity and whose presence dominates any room she’s in. Her dichotomous personality likely accounts for this; through her differential personalities in public versus private, Gladys becomes something of a drag queen herself. Her public persona, in essence, is performative; she dolls up in intense makeup and outfits to establish something of a caricature to interact with others. Meanwhile, in her privacy, she sits solemnly in robes, casting spells, costumeless and in her most natural self. These dual personas–the public versus private and the performative versus non-performative–exactly mirror the daily experiences of drag performance, revoking any wonder surrounding her prominence in queer iconicism. 

Similarly, her position within a homogenous suburbia greatly reflects the experiences of queer individuals placed within similar contexts. From her first appearance entering principal Markus’ office, to which she’s subjected to Markus’ confused interrogation, Gladys is presented as an outlier in a society that doesn’t quite understand her. With every interaction she faces, Gladys is never fully accepted by those around her, exiling her further and further away from the contexts of contemporary social norms. She’s subsequently left in a position to either fight against or flee from her surroundings, to which she chooses the latter. Gladys’ struggle for cohesion within the film’s suburbia exactly aligns with common sentiments felt amongst queer individuals who feel equally ostracized within their respective communities. Our villain is emblematic of the oddities we consider ourselves to be in our intrapersonal cultures and positions. Yet, her perseverance against detachment serves as a battle cry for those in parallel circumstances; the individual control Gladys exhibits in every scene she’s in, regardless of any social discord, proves no social barriers are too great to surmount, and calls for those bearing a similar weight of detachment to enjoy the individual authority they intrinsically have within their communal contexts. 

In pursuing revolutionary methods to scare their audiences, horror directors have inadvertently sparked an ongoing debate over presentations of age and gender in their films. Whereas most films fall victim to the scrutiny that comes with the contentious portrayals of vilified elders, Weapons stands as a hallmark for how positive imaging of the effeminate antagonist can deeply resonate among the horror following. Through Gladys’ dichotomous character, which treads the line between glamorously idiosyncratic and labyrinthinely horrifying, revolutionary avenues are opened for filmmakers to develop new narratives that counteract previous cinematic dependencies (and the controversies they come with) in an effort to change the face of film's potential. In the wake of Weapons’ ever-expanding internet phenomenon, future directors may now think twice about supporting positive depictions of age and gender while still successfully astounding audiences, and you can thank Gladys for that. 

Jackson Palmer is a junior at the School of General Studies at Columbia University, majoring in Film and Media Studies. Outside of the classroom, you can find Jackson skiing, rock climbing, baking, spending time at the movies with friends, or performing alongside two of Columbia’s a cappella groups.

@jacksonhp123