Mild Spoilers Ahead! Zach Cregger’s movies are wildly unique. With his breakout film Barbarian, he played with the fears of anyone staying at an Airbnb realizing that the house is not what it seems. He has followed up this surprise box office hit with Weapons, a twisty, creepy psychological horror movie that plays into every parent’s worst nightmare: their child runs away in the middle of the night.
That’s where Weapons starts, but where it goes is far from this concept. Weapons begins with a voice over explaining how every child in a teacher’s classroom woke up at 2:17am, walked out the front door of their house and ran away, with the exception of one child. From the very beginning, Cregger has the audience asking questions, and continues to draw us in by widening the mystery.
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","img":{"alt":"Cary Christopher hides behind a counter next to shards of broken dishes in 'Weapons' ","height":475,"src":"https://200838.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/200838/Cary%20Christopher%20in%20Weapons%20(2).png","width":840},"link_url":{"no_follow":false,"open_in_new_tab":true,"rel":"noopener","sponsored":false,"url":{"content_id":null,"href":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/?ref_=ttmi_ov_bk","href_with_scheme":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/?ref_=ttmi_ov_bk","type":"EXTERNAL"},"user_generated_content":false}}]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_objects" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}[]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"NOT_SMART"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "wrap_field_tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"div"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% end_module_block %}The Personal Journey
Cregger was suddenly a big deal after the success of Barbarian, and Hollywood was eager to take on his next project. For many filmmakers who find themselves in this situation, there is a certain amount of pressure to perform and to crank something out fast, which Cregger likely felt.
Then, tragedy struck. His best friend died in an accident and Cregger struggled to make sense of the situation. He used writing as his emotional outlet and Weapons became a personal journey for him.
“Writing was just like an emotional reaction to that. I was spared, because of my emotional pain, of writing from a place of ambition. I was writing from a place of catharsis,” Cregger says in a Hollywood Reporter interview. “I started typing; I had no idea what the story was going to be…Stephen King has that amazing metaphor where he’s like, ‘you need to be a paleontologist, and you’re unearthing the dinosaur one bone at a time, but you don’t know what the dinosaur is.’ That’s a beautiful way to create for me. Remove result from the process and just be discovery.”
This technique seems to throw away the concept of outlining, but it’s a method that many writers embrace. Some filmmakers must map out the entire journey and know each step before opening up Final Draft. Others will say, ‘how will I know what my characters do until they do it?’ and create from there.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to write, however, making your story personal is always the right approach.
Along with Cregger’s emotional approach to Weapons, he also pulled from another personal part of his life by using a metaphor of alcoholism in the final chapter of the film and how it affects home life. The example comes out in Alex’s chapter (Weapons is told in a series of chapters following certain characters) and it’s worth examining how Cregger used it for that chapter.
And if you don’t pick up on it, no big deal.
“I don’t care if any of this stuff comes through, the alcoholic metaphor is not important to me,” Cregger says in the Hollywood Reporter. “I hope people have fun, honestly.”
Ultimately, Cregger can teach screenwriters to use personal experiences in the creation of your stories, but not be upset if the audience doesn’t pick up on it – they will create their own interpretation of what they see.
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Genre writers like to pull inspiration from the genre they are working with. For example, Kevin Williamson used horror movies and their tropes to create Scream, and many of today’s action writers and directors will reference their inspiration coming from the blockbusters of the 1980s and 1990s.
However, Cregger didn’t find inspiration in psychological horror movies like Hereditary (which he loves), but rather found the storytelling method of his movie in another kind of film.
Weapons is told in chapters with each one focusing on an individual character. As the characters cross paths, what looks like someone acting irrationally in one way suddenly becomes clear and rational when their story gets told. The inspiration for this storytelling method was Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic 1999 San Fernando Valley drama.
“[It’s] really just because it’s a big ensemble and it’s totally proud to be an epic movie and to be a little bit messy. It paints with all these different colors, but it has such a specific palette, and it’s sad and it’s funny and it’s everything,” Cregger says in a Slash Film interview. “I just love the audacity of that movie. So, when I thought of writing a horror movie…it gives me license to just kind of think differently about how I’m writing it.”
Cregger also shared that he was inspired by films with similar narratives like Pulp Fiction, Nashville and Short Cuts. And yet, Cregger can’t point to why this way to tell the story works for Weapons, he just knew that the focus on characters in individual chapters was the best approach.
“I don’t know why, but this movie seemed to demand being told through these different, interweaving perspectives,” Cregger tells The Playlist. “It wasn’t a decision; it was just how it unfolded. I like all of these characters. They’re all interesting, and they’re all flawed in their own way. They’re all orbiting the same central mystery.”
{% module_block module "widget_6af8ccd2-a423-4526-abbb-41064dbcfad5" %}{% module_attribute "child_css" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}{}{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "css" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}{}{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "definition_id" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}null{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "field_types" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}{"default_text":"group","slides":"group","slideshow_settings":"group","styles":"group"}{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "label" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}null{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "module_id" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}98459521332{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "path" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"@hubspot/image_slider_gallery"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "schema_version" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}2{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "slides" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}[{"caption":"","img":{"alt":"A child running across a dark street in Weapons","height":475,"src":"https://200838.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/200838/Cary%20Christopher%20in%20Weapons.png","width":840},"link_url":{"no_follow":false,"open_in_new_tab":true,"rel":"noopener","sponsored":false,"url":{"content_id":null,"href":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/?ref_=ttmi_ov_bk","href_with_scheme":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/?ref_=ttmi_ov_bk","type":"EXTERNAL"},"user_generated_content":false}}]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_objects" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}[]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"NOT_SMART"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "wrap_field_tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"div"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% end_module_block %}This Would Never Happen
When Superman calls on his dog who then drags him across the frozen tundra to safety, we believe it. And when the Ghostbusters use proton packs to destroy a marshmallow man and send a demon god back to its own dimension, we believe that too.
Audiences are willing to suspend disbelief if the writer sets up the story to be believable whether it involves a superhero or strange things in a small town. Cregger immediately sets up something fantastical so that the audience will believe almost anything strange that happens in the movie. There is seemingly no way 17 kids would flee their home at the exact same time in the middle of the night and never be seen again. But audiences go along with it because we believe it in the context of the story. And if the audience believes that, Cregger has opened the door for a suspension of disbelief, and allows the audience to be just as confused, disoriented and fearful like the characters in the movie.
Weapons is a psychologically twisted story designed to keep you guessing from start to finish. Each chapter, almost each new scene, brings on more questions until the third act when it all starts to make sense. Once we gain an understanding of what’s going on, we now ask: How are they going to get out of this situation? That question is the basis for compelling storytelling, and is how you can keep your audience engaged.