Zach Cregger’s 10 favourite movies
Given the amount of money spent by the movie industry on marketing, as much as $100million or more per film on some of the bigger titles, it’s almost surprising that such a thing as a word-of-mouth hit still exists.
However, that’s exactly what the Zach Cregger horror Barbarian was back in 2022; a low-budget cracker that those in the know would ask, “Have you seen it yet?”
Like many effective horror movies, the beauty of Barbarian is that the initial premise and the setting are so everyday and believable. A young woman arrives at an Airbnb in the middle of the night only to find it has been double-booked and is already occupied by a man. That’s a hell of an elevator pitch right there. We don’t want to spoil it in case you haven’t seen it yet (why not!), so we won’t say more than that. But suffice to say, things start to go downhill, rapidly, in quite spectacular fashion.
Featuring a brilliantly desperate performance by British actor Georgina Campbell, Barbarian was made on a budget of just $4million and came from former comedian Cregger simply sitting down without a plan and trying to think of scenarios that would encourage women not to ignore red flags in situations with strange men.
Initially, it was a movie that nobody wanted to make. Cregger saw his script rejected by studio after studio, while those that did show interest wanted huge changes to the twisting premise. Eventually, it was snapped up by an Indie called Boulderlight Pictures, founded by 20-somethings who understood the vision and believed in the potential. Once they had partnered with more established legacy studios in order to get the movie made, with name actors including Justin Long and Bill Skarsgård involved, it was able to get a US-wide cinema release.
But once it was out, the number of theatres had to be drastically increased week by week, thanks to the reaction from horror fans, until eventually the film hit number one. It ended up raking in ten times what it cost to produce. Cregger then took a couple of years to work on his next project, Weapons. Released this week, it’s the spooky story of a group of 17 schoolchildren who vanish from their homes at exactly the same time in the middle of the night, and the script was the subject of a feverish bidding war that ran to the tens of millions.
Weapons already seems set to follow the same trajectory as Barbarian – albeit on a much, much bigger scale. The movie stars Ozark’s Julia Garner and Josh Brolin and is projected to make $40m at the box office just in its opening weekend.
Creeger himself is evidently influenced not just by horror but by some of the more classic movies of recent times. When asked to select his favourite films of all time he included 1974’s seminal slasher The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but elsewhere stuck to movies that regularly top best of lists, including Spielberg’s harrowing Schindler’s List and the 2002 critics favourite City of God, the Brazilian film set in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
He told the BFI, “It feels silly declaring these the greatest 10 movies of all time because art is subjective, but these are currently my favourites.”
Zach Cregger’s 10 favourite movies:
- Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1995)
- Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1994)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
- Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
- Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
- Mulholland Dr (David Lynch, 2001)
- The City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
- Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
- Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
