Is Weapons a misogynist movie? The “hagsploitation” accusations, explained

This is sometimes also referred to as a “psycho-biddy” role, and recent forms of it have appeared in movies like The Substance, Ti West’s X, Cregger’s Barbarian, and the Eggers brothers’ The Front Room. Plenty has been written about whether this new wave of hagsploitation is just misogyny dressed up in the latest and gnarliest practical make-up effects. Some critics and horror fans feel that it’s too easy to turn these kinds of characters into a series of cheap shots at the supposed grossness of any female body a movie has deemed as too old to be the object of traditional sexual desire. But while Weapons may dip into hagsploitation, Cregger’s version of the trope lands differently than it does in other recent movies that cross the line into bad taste.