Ask anyone who watched Barbarian in cinemas, and they’ll tell you the same thing: they never knew quite what was coming next. Zach Cregger’s 2022 horror was full of thrilling narrative hairpin turns, twisting in wildly unexpected ways as it unspooled its loopy story. And by the sounds of things, he’s only just getting started. The writer-director is back this summer with the highly-anticipated Weapons, another horror original, with an almightily creepy premise.
The gist is this: in the middle of the night (2:17am, to be exact), an entire class of children (except for one) wakes up, and disappears into the street, never to be seen again. But why? And how? And now what? Cregger promises another wild ride in getting those answers – a super-dark premise that should still make for a rip-roaring cinema experience. “[It’s] a fun movie,” he promises Empire. “It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s inviting. It’s not a grim, morose slog. And yet the story it tells is really fucked up.” It is, he says, a “creatively ambitious” work, that’s “a lot bigger and weirder than Barbarian”.
Where Barbarian sprang from the idea of an Airbnb rental gone horribly wrong, Cregger teases something more internal as the inspiration this time. “Barbarian was an exploration of social themes; [it] was me looking at the world around me,” he explains. “This is more an exploration of my own personal shit, for lack of a better word. Weapons is me looking within, and working on myself.” Get ready to run to the cinema to see what Cregger has in store this time – just, maybe not at 2:17am, ok?
Read Empire’s full Zach Cregger interview on Weapons in The Fantastic Four: First Steps issue – on sale Thursday 5 June. Pre-order a copy online here. Weapons comes to UK cinemas from 8 August.