Every movie that inspired Zach Cregger’s ‘Weapons’
The world of horror cinema welcomed a new hero in 2022 with the release of Barbarian.
This shocking story of an Airbnb booking gone wrong took audiences on a wild ride before ending up in a place that nobody could have predicted. Its director, Zach Cregger, became an instant darling, with everyone wondering what his twisted mind would come up with next. They were not disappointed as, three years after his big break, Cregger returned to the horror genre with something even more harrowing: Weapons.
Starring Julia Garner, Benedict Wong, and Josh Brolin, this tale of small-town terror begins when a group of children from the same class at school all get up in the middle of the night and leave their homes, never to return. Thanks in part to an absolutely petrifying viral marketing campaign, the movie captured the imaginations of fans the world over. It has become a critical and financial hit, with a prequel movie already in the works. Its monumental success has secured Cregger’s place at the horror high table.
An idea as bold as this one doesn’t come from nothing. As he explained to Letterboxd, Cregger took inspiration from a number of other projects, both horror and otherwise. Obviously, he was influenced by other films that feature children doing unexpected things. As he said himself, “Kids are scary. I don’t have any. They freak me out”.
The seven films Cregger provided for this deep dive, three of them can best be described as ‘creepy kids doing weird stuff’. Among the titles was Picnic at Hanging Rock, the eerie Australian folk horror about schoolgirls vanishing after a trip to the landmark. He also pointed to The Orphanage, the haunting Spanish film about a woman searching for her son after she moves back into the children’s home where she grew up. Finally, there’s one of the all-time ‘creepy kids’ movies, a reference which can always be spotted being used…Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
“I lift directly from The Shining in this movie. I’m not even ashamed,” Cregger confessed, “It’s the first movie that made me fall deeply in love with horror”. The filmmaker also mentioned another adaptation of a Stephen King novel, Fraser C Heston’s Needful Things.
Cregger revealed that he had been enamoured with the trailer for the movie when he was younger, but was disappointed with the result. This may have informed Weapons’ promotional tactics, although hopefully fewer people were left wanting by the finished product.
Outside of the horror realm, he was inspired by the cinematography of Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. “I really, really wanted to, like, evoke everything visually that that movie evoked,” he said, praising the legendary Roger Deakins for his work behind the camera. Prisoners also revolves around missing children, and a determined father deeply involved in the search.
Cregger also took time to praise Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic slice-of-life drama Magnolia, as he is particularly fond of John C Reilly’s moustache in that film, pointing out that Alden Ehrenreich sports a very similar one in his movie.
Throwing out a real curveball for his final slice of inspiration, he picked the 1984 documentary Streetwise, which follows a group of drug-addicted young people living on the streets of Seattle. Cregger directly references it through the use of narration in Weapons, as he told Scarlett Shar, the young girl who provides voiceover for his film, to emulate Streetwise in her performance. Hopefully, he didn’t show her too much of the film as otherwise, that kid is going to be scarred for life.
The films behind Weapons:
- Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
- The Orphanage (JA Bayona, 2007)
- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- Needful Things (Fraser C Heston, 1993)
- Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)
- Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
- Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984)
