Can ‘Weapons’ Director Zach Cregger Elevate Horror Again?
A small fleet of black Mercedes Sprinter vans, each with the word WEAPONS in the window, ferries everyone to lunch. Base camp was about fifteen minutes away, in Tucker, GA, inside the Mount Moriah Baptist Church, a complex of modernist brick buildings with one parking lot fully occupied by trailers for top cast and crew. I exchange pleasantries with several extras who know less than I do about the film’s story and seem surprised to learn that Cregger’s an actor, let alone an accomplished sketch comic.
This was a theme. The day before, Cregger and I had caught a showing of the 1998 German thriller Run Lola Run with two of Weapons’ stars, Julia Garner and Austin Abrams. Afterwards, over dinner, I was startled to learn that neither had any idea of Cregger’s career before Barbarian. Later, in a phone conversation, I’d ask Brolin what he’d known of Cregger’s past life.
“Zero.”
I ask if he’s seen Barbarian.
“No,” Brolin says. “I saw Barbarian after Weapons came to me. I was like, well, what else has this guy done? Did Barbarian. And then I saw it and I liked it. I can’t say that I’m one of the people that just went, Oh God, this is a revelation. I called my 31-year-old daughter and I said, ‘Hey, have you seen this movie Barbarian?’ She goes, ‘Oh my God, that’s the best movie in the last five years. And I go, lemme talk to your husband. I talked to her husband who’s early thirties. Have you seen Barbarian? ‘Oh my God. Best movie of the last whatever…’ And once I started talking to all these twenty- and thirty-somethings, they all loved it. Across the board. There was just some hybrid of ridiculous and also scary that just worked. He cracked a code.”
After lunch, I catch a shuttle to a suburban neighborhood elsewhere in town. Cregger is leading a small crew through several backyards—the magic of Hollywood reaching 3,000 miles into Tucker, GA, granting us backstage access to the homes of strangers. The hammering drone of cicadas provides the soundtrack to bunched-up underwear and sweat-sticky t-shirts.
“How many things are ours?” he asks his crew, surveying various potted plants and lawn bric-a-brac. A discussion follows, regarding the physics of smashing through a fence convincingly, and how deeply a fence needs to be scored before it no longer poses a serious threat to a hurtling stuntperson. Notes are taken, chaos prepped. Down the street, cop cars for the fictional McCarren County drive past cop cars for the very real Dekalb County.
On August 6, 2021, Cregger reunited with his Whitest Kids U’ Know co-star Trevor Moore on the WKUK Twitch streaming channel, one of several set up to raise money for the group’s unfilmed full-length comedy Mars. Their show, Newsboyz (“the flagship show,” they kept calling it, to needle the other Whitest Kids) was cheerfully chaotic, like public-access cable. In video from the night, Cregger and Moore have the sloppy rapport of two people who have worked closely for 20 years—occasionally too close, while touring or filming—yet still clearly enjoy each other’s company. The in-jokes, many deeply salty, came layered with years of nuanced in-jokes.
