Zach Cregger joined Jordan Peele, Osgood Perkins, and Julia Ducournau as one of the most exciting horror filmmakers with his directorial debut Barbarian. The movie was commercial and critical hit, and now following a massive bidding war, he’s back with his next feature.
Weapons stars Julia Garner as a teacher whose students go missing at the same time, on the same night. What happened? Where did they all go? Thankfully, the disturbing Weapons trailer, which you can watch above, will hook you in without giving away the answers.
While writing Weapons, Cregger found inspiration from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. (I’d call it PTA’s masterpiece, but he has many of those.) “I just like that kind of unapologetic, ‘This is an epic.’ I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that.”
If Weapons features any frogs or Aimee Mann songs, you’ll know why.
Weapons, which also stars Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan, hits theaters on August 8.