‘Weapons’ Is Why We Go to the Movies, With Zach Cregger!

Summary

The Big Picture: ‘Weapons’ Is Why We Go to the Movies, With Zach Kreger!

Release Date: August 8, 2025
Host: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins
Guest: Zach Kreger

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Introduction and Live Show Announcement

The episode kicks off with Sean Fennessey announcing an exciting live show at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on October 4th, encouraging listeners to mark their calendars and purchase tickets starting August 12th at 2:00 PM ET.

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Brian Raftery’s Summer Narrative Series

Before delving into the main content, Sean informs listeners of a temporary hiatus taken by him and Amanda as they prepare for the Fall Film Festivals. In their absence, Brian Raftery steps in to host a narrative series exploring the transformative years of the early 2000s in Hollywood and the broader cultural landscape. Brian discusses his deep dive into the Bush years, highlighting the shift from indie films to blockbuster franchises that defined the decade. He emphasizes the importance of critical distance in analyzing films from this era, noting how movies from the early 2000s reflect the societal tumult post-9/11 and the evolving Hollywood dynamics.

Notable Quote:

• Brian Raftery [04:35]: "I do think you do need a certain amount of distance to understand the time that you're going through and what the art of that time is kind of telling you."

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Main Discussion: Elevated Horror and ‘Together’ vs. ‘Weapons’

Sean transitions into discussing the current trend of "elevated horror," a term often used to describe horror films that aim to be more intellectually engaging or thematically deep than traditional entries in the genre. He critiques this trend, arguing that while it has commercial benefits, it sometimes results in mediocrity despite its lofty aspirations.

‘Together’
Sean reviews "Together," a horror-thriller directed by Zach Kreger, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie. The film explores the deterioration of a long-term relationship under supernatural pressures, blending body horror with relationship drama. Sean appreciates the film's modern take on symbiosis within relationships but notes some over-the-top set pieces that, while entertaining, occasionally undermine the film's core themes.

Notable Quotes:

• Sean Fennessey [13:10]: "But this wave that started roughly a decade ago has persisted with lots of mediocre movies loudly announcing its ideas about trauma and loss and existential despair."
• Sean Fennessey [14:35]: "I was the only person in that theater who've lost their mind happily with that anchorman ending of whatever that was at the gang show."

‘Weapons’
The conversation then shifts to "Weapons," Zach Kreger's latest film, starring Josh Brolin and Julia Garner. Sean describes "Weapons" as an original, multi-character horror thriller that intertwines suspense with thematic depth. He praises the film's structure, performances, and cinematography, likening its final act to a crescendo of intense emotions and horror elements.

Notable Quotes:

• Sean Fennessey [49:25]: "Weapons is about something... it's a child abduction movie. This is a movie that you can watch purely as a plot exercise, as a corker. And it is a corker."
• Sean Fennessey [82:16]: "It's just something that is indebted to a lot, but unlike anything I've ever seen before."

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In-Depth Interview with Zach Kreger

Zach Kreger joins Sean to discuss the making of "Weapons," providing insights into his creative process, inspirations, and challenges faced during production.

Writing and Inspirations
Zach reveals that "Weapons" was written as a therapeutic outlet during a personal tragedy, allowing him to channel his grief into storytelling. He emphasizes that the film was born out of a necessity to process pain rather than ambition, which he believes contributes to its authenticity and emotional resonance.

Notable Quote:

• Zach Kreger [49:54]: "I just sat down to just start writing, just to engage with my pain in a way that was, you know, not destructive, but constructive."

Filmmaking Process
Zach discusses the substantial increase in budget from his previous film "Barbarian" to "Weapons," highlighting the challenges and growth he experienced. He shares anecdotes about casting, such as his first meeting with Josh Brolin, and the importance of having a script-driven approach that remained true to his vision despite external pressures.

Cinematography and Score
Zach credits his collaborators, particularly cinematographer Larkin Sapley and his childhood friends Ryan and Hayes Holiday, for elevating the film’s visual and auditory experience. He describes the use of hyper-subjective camera techniques inspired by films like "Son of Saul" to immerse the audience in the characters' perspectives.

Notable Quote:

• Zach Kreger [58:17]: "Every chapter should be hyper subjective, and so that was something that we set for ourselves really early on."

Themes and Final Act
Zach explains that "Weapons" balances horror and emotional depth without overtly intellectualizing its themes. He discusses the film's climactic shift into supernatural horror, aiming for a thrilling and satisfying conclusion that leaves a lasting impact on the audience.

Notable Quote:

• Zach Kreger [63:10]: "I'm not sitting on something that's terrifying to me that I wouldn't dare put in a movie."

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Themes and Syllabus Recommendations

Toward the end of the episode, Sean and Zach discuss various films that influenced "Weapons" and those that resonate with its themes. They mention classics like "Magnolia," "Rosemary’s Baby," "The Blood on Satan’s Claw," and contemporary films like "Hereditary" and "Insidious," providing a curated list for listeners interested in exploring similar narratives and stylistic elements.

Notable Quote:

• Zach Kreger [70:58]: "Magnolia, Hereditary, Prisoners, Picnic at Hanging Rock."

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Final Thoughts and Upcoming Projects

Zach shares his excitement for upcoming projects, including a Resident Evil adaptation, emphasizing his commitment to original storytelling despite the allure of established IPs. He also touches on his desire for physical media releases for his films, highlighting the importance of special features in enriching the viewer's experience.

Notable Quote:

• Zach Kreger [84:10]: "I joined their chorus and I have, I have. Have banged the drum and made phone calls and tried my best to get some sort of physical media, and I'm not making headway, and it kind of bums me out."

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Conclusion

Sean wraps up the episode by thanking Zach Kreger and highlighting the upcoming content, including Brian Raftery’s series and future episodes focused on Fall Film Festivals. He encourages listeners to stay tuned for more insightful conversations and movie recommendations.

Notable Quote:

• Sean Fennessey [88:02]: "Thanks to Zach Kreger. Please stay tuned on this feed for Mission Accomplished. It's an awesome show and I know if you love movies and stories about making of movies and how they fit into the culture at large here in this country and abroad, you will find that story fascinating."

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of "Weapons," enriched by an engaging interview with Zach Kreger. Listeners gain valuable insights into Kreger’s creative journey, the film’s thematic depth, and its place within the evolving landscape of horror cinema. Whether you're a fan of horror thrillers or interested in the filmmaking process, this episode provides a captivating deep dive into contemporary horror storytelling.

Transcript

[Sean Fennessey]

We have a very special announcement. We had so much fun at our live show in Chicago, we decided to head back out on the road this fall. We're heading to the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Saturday, October 4th for a live show and we'd love for you to join us.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Mark your calendars because tickets will go on sale on August 12th at 2:00pm Eastern Time at 92n y.org 92ny.org Again.

[Sean Fennessey]

The big picture will be in New York City at the 92nd Street Y on Saturday, October 4th and tickets go on sale Tuesday, August 12th at 2:00pm Eastern Time. We hope to see you there. This episode is brought to you by FX's alien Earth. From creator Noah Hawley and executive producer Ridley Scott comes the first television series inspired by the legendary Alien film franchise. A spaceship crash lands Earth on, bringing five unique and deadly species more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined, and a technological advancement marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. FX's Alien Earth premieres August 12th on FX and Hulu. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Whether you're debating watching that award winning TV drama or rewatching your comfort cult classic for the 10th time, choices are important when it comes to choosing coverage. A State Farm agent can help you find options that are right for you. Go online@state farm.com or use the app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. I'm Sean Fennesee and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about weapons. Today is a great day because there's a new Zach Kreger movie out the multi character horror thriller Weapons. We'll dig into this twisty, delightful new movie soon, along with another recent horror hit Together. Later in the show, I'll be joined by Cragger to talk about weapons. Zack was last on the show a few years back with his surprise horror hit Barbarian. Huge favorite of mine and CR's simply one of the most exciting new writer directors to come along in a long time. Zach's super smart guy fun guest. Stick around for that chat. Later in the episode we get pretty deep into the movie. But before that programming note for our listeners, this will be the last proper Big Picture episode. In August. Amanda and I are taking a brief break and we'll be back when we return from the Fall Film Festivals in September. In our place on the feed. We're very lucky to have Brian Raftery back hosting another narrative series about the movies and Hollywood. If you haven't had a chance to hear his past summer series on Siskel and Ebert or Vietnam portrayed on screen or the Sony hack, check those out as well. You can all find them in the archives of the Big Picture. Now let's hear from Brian about what he has for us this summer. Well, Brian Raftery is here. It's summer, so there must be a Brian Raftery series on the Big Picture. Thank you for being here.

[Zach Kreger]

Absolutely.

[Sean Fennessey]

So just in a nutshell, explain what this idea was and how you went about pursuing it.

[Brian Raftery]

Yeah, the idea was to look at the Bush years, which at one point was the worst presidential time of my lifetime. But now, boy, it looks really good in retrospect. And I know it's been like a joke lately, like, oh, weren't the Bush years much better? And I'm like, they weren't, but were they?

[Sean Fennessey]

They were.

[Brian Raftery]

So the idea is to look at sort of two big things going on in the early 2000s. One is obviously what's going on in the world post 9 11, with Bush, with Katrina, with this kind of really emotionally tumultuous time, but also looking at these big changes that happened in Hollywood from basically 2000 to 2009. And it was maybe the most kind of epochal shift in Hollywood in my lifetime. You have obviously, franchise has been around for a long time, but in the 2000s, they really start going with the iPad, Harry Potter, Spider Man, Lord of the Rings, Shrek. I mean, all these sort of big franchises. And at the same time, when the decade begins, you have a lot of the carryover from the 90s. You have all these great indie filmmakers. You have these kind of like mini major studios. And by the end of 2000s, they're gone. And it's like the Marvel universe is about to begin. Netflix is taking off. It's like, okay, the Hollywood we knew, it had kind of like these last couple of years in the 2000s. So the whole idea of the show is looking at a couple of the really great movies and how they were made, looking at some of the big events and how they were kind of fed into the event, into these movies and vice versa, but also looking at this big shift in Hollywood that I don't think has really kind of been called out because there were understandably more important things going on in the 2000s that we were all thinking about. So how he went from the 70s cinema to three Shrek movies was not top of mind in 2005, 2006. So again, maybe we should have just been focusing on that. It was probably more fun than dealing with the Real world back then, did.

[Sean Fennessey]

You feel like you had enough of a critical distance from all of these movies to think about how they fit into not just the cultural landscape, but a genuine world historical landscape?

[Brian Raftery]

I think so. I hope so. I mean, as you all know, because you've been talking about all year. I mean, these movies, some of these movies are now 23, 24, 25 years old.

[Sean Fennessey]

They are.

[Brian Raftery]

These are old movies. And I do think you do need a certain amount of distance to understand the time that you're going through and what the art of that time is kind of telling you. And I think 15, 20 years is like a pretty good time also. Like, I'd really rather just look at the early 2000s right now than look at 20, 20, 25 in the world.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a really good point.

[Brian Raftery]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I did think that the movies that you chose, which I think we're going to try not to spoil in this conversation, we'll see how far we get, and maybe people can guess, but I. I thought that they're all very smart choices. Some of them were surprising to me, and they did all have a tinge.

[Zach Kreger]

Of.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Their personal choices. You bring to them a reason of. Maybe not like, I was there when this world historical event happened, but you are looking back and remember, okay, this is what stands out to me from 2005 and how I was thinking about the world. And this is the movie that explained it to me. But I was wondering, like, how did. How did you get to that list? Because they're not the most obvious all of the time.

[Brian Raftery]

No, they're not always obvious. I mean, I think the first list, because we had a Google Doc at one point, had like 75 to 80 movies. And there are. When you think of the 2000s, I mean, one thing we sort of decided early on was I didn't want movies that were too much on the nose, like I didn't want to do. If you say to someone, what's a movie about the Bush years? Someone might talk about a very specific documentary. And I kind of didn't want to do that because I kind of want to look at movies that Maybe did take five, 10 years to quite realize how they were dealing with the time in which they were made. But there were some really painful choices. I mean, I remember, like, I cut down the list at one point. I'm like, all right, now we're down to 25 movies. I can't cut a single one of these. And then we cut them more. And I was looking for movies that had a great story behind them. Cause a lot of the show is kind of how these big kind of crucial cultural movies were made. But I also wanted to really look at what was it saying about the Bush years. What was it saying about all these things that were swirling around with a recession, with Katrina, with the war on terror, the. With Bush's reelection in 2004. What were these movies kind of saying? And sometimes they're saying things very accidentally. That's why some of the movies are kind of surprising, where you're like, what does that movie have to do with Bush? But you're looking at this bigger picture and this bigger time, and everything going on feeds into the art of that time. So a lot of these movies are movies that I also personally love. That makes it easier for me to talk about them in an enthusiastic way. And they're all movies, I think are really interesting. Even the ones that I don't love as much as the others. I'm like, the story of this movie and its existence is interesting enough to warrant its inclusion.

[Sean Fennessey]

One of the great moves that you make is to pair movies together in individual episodes. So how did you think about matching or maybe creating contrasts in the conversation between. And threading them together, which I think is the biggest achievement of the show.

[Brian Raftery]

That's really hard. I mean, threading together is one term. Kind of like pulling it together at the last minute out of stress is a college. No, but some of these things, you're like, you are looking for a connection because there's one episode where there's two movies that are drastically different in tone in subject, but they're kind of set during the same period, and they're set during the kind of same industry, and they're set in the same state. And like, even that is kind of like a connective tissue, because one episode is about these two movies set in the past at a time when Americans were just longing for the past. And these two films are saying actually, like, all that nostalgia for that America.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That you're seeing is like, this is a good episode.

[Brian Raftery]

Yeah, like that. That nostalgia is for a time that never really existed. And these two movies about the past are actually sort. Showing what. What this country has always been like. So things like that. And, you know, sometimes it's also. It's also fun to think of, like, big picture listeners seeing the two titles in an episode and going, what? Like, how do these two movies tie together? And there's a lot of, like, sometimes that can be kind of like a torturous kind of logical thing, but sometimes the Movies just fit together in ways that you, you don't expect. And they kind of come together in the writing and hopefully in the, in the sort of, in the narration.

[Sean Fennessey]

What'd you find in the reporting? Trying to talk to people about movies that were made 20, 25 years ago, and especially movies that some of them are clear totemic works or at least hardcore cult movies, and some are just kind of like a little bit forgotten or cast aside in some ways too. What kind of reactions are you getting when you reached out to people about chatting?

[Brian Raftery]

I think people are interested in talking about this period in the same way that we're all starting to think about it more in the last couple years. And I think part of it is that progression of time. I think there's also a recognition that this was a period in Hollywood history where the studios, again, they were leaning in pretty hard on franchises as the 2000s went on. But if you look at some of the slates that some of the studios had in like a 2000, 2001, 2002, they're making every kind of movie still. Like, they're really. And a lot of filmmakers were getting like, still, we're still getting these kind of big permission slips to go, okay, you have one star, here's $60 million. Go make that weird R rated drama. And I think that's for filmmakers. This is a time they like to. I mean, it's kind of the same way to that 99 book where it's like, oh, I get to talk about the time when me and all my friends like made these underrated movies that everyone loves now. Sure, I'm happy to talk about that. You're not calling and asking these directors about their third divorce and the studio gig they took that summer to kind of pay for their mortgage. Like, these are things people want to talk about. And I think there's also a recognition that these movies, some of them have become some of them. A lot of movies in the show there are not huge, like blockbusters. I mean, I don't know if we have a single, like we have like maybe one that got close to 100 million, maybe 2. But like, these are movies that some of these movies everyone knows and they become culturally really important and people want to talk about that. And again, the Bush years were weird. And now we have this perspective to talk about all this crazy stuff that happened that we couldn't quite understand or maybe articulate at the time.

[Sean Fennessey]

So we're not going to give away the titles of the films. But what since we're doing context clues. What was your favorite conversation that you had interview that you had for the show?

[Brian Raftery]

I had a bunch. There is one filmmaker whose movie. There is a certain movie that, like. One of the reasons I want to do this show is because there's a certain year where a couple of these very big movies came out. And I'm very big on movie years. And there is one film that is very downbeat, very 70s American film that is a comfort movie for myself, for a lot of people. I think some people might have lawn signs about this movie and how much they love it. Yeah. And that filmmaker is. I just respect a lot. And I love this script. I love the direction. And it was also. This person was very grateful for their time. And in the last 20 minutes, this is like, this is just Brian Raptory asking questions about this movie he loved. It was sort of like, I'm not gonna use this, but have we got scene X? Cause, like, I could talk or think about this movie all day. So, yes, I'm very. I was very excited to talk to that filmmaker, but everyone we got was great. And again, these are movies that I think some of these people realize are maybe beloved, but a little underappreciated in the grander kind of picture of the 2000s.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Does it spoil it to ask what the hardest cuts were? Are we allowed to do that things that will not be featured?

[Sean Fennessey]

What was the last couple movies you cut?

[Brian Raftery]

I will say the one person I wanted for the show and I couldn't get because I think he is the defining 2000s filmmaker is M. Night Shyamalan. And we tried to make it just couldn't work out. And I love his movies. Even the ones I don't love, I love. I think his movies are a fascinating. The entire Bush years can be told through the four or five movies he made during that time. And so that was the hardest cut also, because I couldn't pick just one. Like, I was really trying to. What is like, do you do Unbreakable? Which I think is a really interesting, like, movie about 2000? Do you do Signs, which is like, a really amazing kind of accidental 911 movie. Do you do the Happening? Which is an amazing movie for a gazillion reasons. But M. Night is kind of one person where I felt like, oh, I would have loved to get him, but also I feel like I also would have just gone down a nerdy conversation that would have been very insular about George Bush. Wawas living in Pennsylvania. I've interviewed him in the past, and I do enjoy Speaking with him.

[Sean Fennessey]

So it's funny you say that. I was thinking about the list that Amanda and I have been doing on the show as well. And there's not an M. Night Shyamalan movie on the list. And it's for the exact same reason that you described, which is sort of like all of his movies to me are all like four star movies and not five star movies. And that feeling of, well, maybe not the happening. It's not a four star movie, but you know, four stars.

[Brian Raftery]

So it's kind of a ten star movie for me for various reasons.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, there's something kind of. I'm just always so happy to have a new movie.

[Brian Raftery]

Oh my gosh.

[Sean Fennessey]

I should think about it and to unpack it. And their flaws are always so evident too. But he would have been a great subject for conversation around this. I'm very excited. So we, you know, we're about to go on a little bit of a break here and it's been an interesting movie year. So you're like an avid movie watcher. You're really up on contemporary movie culture.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You're saying that you, you've really been at the movies this summer?

[Brian Raftery]

I've been movies this summer. I was finishing a project and this project and I finally got some free time. So yeah, I've been, I've been very happy this summer. I have had. I mean, I saw Eddington, which I'm not able to stop thinking about. But I will say the most fun movie going experience was when my wife and I saw 28 years later. I don't want to give away the ending, but I was the only person in that theater who've lost their mind happily with that anchorman ending of whatever that was at the gang show. And that was one of the. It's a really fun thing because I love the feeling when you're all in with the crowd. This is one of those things where I was like, none of you morons get how great this is. The AMC16 Burbank. You're usually a very good audience. You do not appreciate how great and crazy this movie is. So I was very. That was one of the most fun movie going experiences of the year. And also I went to go see Amadeus in 70 millimeter when my wife had never seen it. Yeah, the machine broke. There were some technical things and we wound up watching it on Finishing at Home on Tubi. Still a perfect movie from. From 70 millimeter to Tubi.

[Sean Fennessey]

I heard from some people, actually our friend Izzy was there too for that screening too. And yeah, it broke and it was kind of a nightmare.

[Zach Kreger]

It was.

[Sean Fennessey]

But you know what?

[Brian Raftery]

God bless them, they really did their best. But at a certain point we're like, let's go back. But like, just seeing Amadeus for the first time in like 30 years, I was like, perfect movie, no notes as to quote Amadeus. Like, it's just like, I love that film. So, yes, I'm always, I'm. I've been very happy. The movies this year. I've seen a lot of great stuff. I'm still trying to catch up on some things I missed. But yeah, I mean, I have like three or four movies planned out for the next two weeks. Once, Once my wife's back in town.

[Sean Fennessey]

Anything for the rest of the year that you're really excited about.

[Brian Raftery]

I mean, I'm very excited for the new PTA movie, obviously, but I'm super excited for the Naked Gun. I've seen the original Naked Gun 10 million times. It is absolutely a movie. That and Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Lines from those movies go into my head every single day, whether I know it or not. And like, like everyone, I'm just like, please make comedies again in the theater. Like, I don't think like Jackass 3 was like the last time. I mean, I whipped it up at the end of 28 years later. But like Jackass 3 or so, maybe 4, whatever it was, was like the last time I saw a really big comedy with a crowd that was into it. And so I'm really excited for that. And my kids are all wants to see it now, I think.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I think.

[Brian Raftery]

Who cares?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, there's. There's. There's one scene that maybe you wouldn't want to watch together, but maybe not.

[Brian Raftery]

Yeah, that's all right. They've been through worse at this point.

[Sean Fennessey]

Brian, thank you so much.

[Zach Kreger]

Thank you guys.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Excited for everyone to hear it.

[Zach Kreger]

Okay, cool.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay, it's just me now. I'm doing this episode by myself. And that's because Amanda and Chris are traveling. And so weapons being very important to me. I have a lot of deep feelings about it. And I wanted to pair it today with another movie, a movie that came out last week. And I think that's appropriate because they're both horror movies in a sense. We're in the era of what has been unfortunately dubbed elevated horror. It's a catch all term used to describe a certain kind of genre movie that bore the pretentious weight of being smarter or deeper than your average standard issue teen slasher or monster movie. Of course, there is no such Thing as elevated horror. That's just marketing speak. To make a movie like It Follows or the Witch. Two early examples of this seem more special, more high value than a regular old horror movie. And the massive success of movies like get out and Hereditary Mask the fact that horror has always been elevated insofar as it's the most flexible, pleasurable genre to nestle thematic and emotional ideas inside of. I'm fond of saying that horror is my favorite genre because I'm dead inside and it awakens something in me, a kind of giddy sickness that I really find thrilling. But this wave that started roughly a decade ago has persisted with lots of mediocre movies loudly announcing its ideas about trauma and loss and existential despair. It's been good for business. You know, horror movies are the most reliable, non superhero IP style films at the box office over the last 10 years or so. But it has been a bit of a mixed bag for the art form. And so together and Weapons are two sides of the same coin. One movie is great, in my opinion, a true standout from a rising voice in the space. And one is perfectly solid good time at the movies. They're both mordantly funny, they both have strong performances. One is aggressively sold on its theme, which doubles as its premise. And the other is sold on mystery, confusion, elision, the dark romance of not knowing. That's a feeling I love at the movies. The latter is something that is increasingly rare. It doesn't mean that the latter isn't shot through with big ideas. There are big ideas in the movie Weapons, but they're subtext, unannounced and kind of ready to be picked over after you've seen the whole piece. But one movie is just pure suspense in the telling, kind of ticking clock just waiting to rattle at its conclusion, while the other is. Is diagrammatic. You know, it's an exploration of its idea a little bit at the expense of its story. So this has been an exceptional year for thematic horror movies from strong minded auteur's Sinners. It's one of the year's great movies. Of course, firmly behind it for me is Danny Boyle's 28 years later, even Eddington, which is far from a pure horror movie, but when you really think about it, is steeped in the same angst and anxiety and provocation that the genre is best at pursuing. And of course, fitting from Ari Aster, who has a long lineage of horror in his career. So now, one of these two movies I'm discussing today may be a turning point of sorts that May be a little bit strong, but I wanted to pin them together because I'm hoping that we start shifting in one direction and away from another. But that doesn't mean that the first movie I'm going to talk about isn't worthwhile or worth talking about. So let's get into it now. So Together is written, directed by Michael Shanks. It stars Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who are of course, a real life married couple. The movie premiered at Sundance. I think it was probably the noisiest Sundance premiere of the year, along with maybe a handful of other movies like Sorry Baby. This one was an acquisition by Neon. They bought it out of the festival for a large sum. It played the midnights at Sundance and had people screaming and running in the aisles, usually a good sign. And now the movie has been used to kind of revive the feeling of long legs. Last summer, strong marketing, heavy marketing around a gross movie that is indebted to a history of horror movies. It's off to a pretty good start. It's made about $13 million already at the box office. Not bad for an indie. And it's about a couple named Tim and Millie. They're years into their relationship. They find themselves at a crossroads because they move from the city to the countryside. They leave their friends behind, they leave the world behind that they know really well. They Millie's got a new job as a teacher in this small town. And Tim, who is a musician who's kind of on the downside of his creative life and is trying to get back to that feeling of special creativity, is doing so while also figuring out if he and Millie are right for each other long term. And so they encounter a mysterious and unnatural force early on in the movie and it changes their lives, changes their love, changes their bodies. This is a really very modern riff on body horror. David Cronenberg often used these kinds of movies to explore ideas about the self, our desires, our frailties, our overriding urge to control the flesh. Right. This movie is more about symbiosis. So Tim and Millie are thrust together at this very distinct stage of their lives. Mid 30s, settling in, gearing up for the back half of their lives, slowly becomes a rift on the codependency that forms in long term relationships. Anybody who is in a long term relationship with a partner can probably testify. You know, I have several in my life, of course. My wife, who I love dearly, Amanda and I are in a very long term relationship. Here on the podcast, sometimes you can hear us getting very frustrated with each other. Other times you can hear the natural affection, but there is a kind of reliance upon one another. And sometimes it's toxic, sometimes it's. It's exciting. This movie is more interested in initially the downsides and then perhaps ultimately the upsides. Though it is a little bit more obtuse in that respect. So there's a lot of fun stuff. The setup is a little preposterous and left me a little bit wanting. So after cracks are revealed in Tim and Millie's relationship early on, they go out for a hike in the woods near their home. Along the way, they get lost and it begins to rain and they accidentally fall into a cave like sinkhole, like you do when you're on a hike in the rain. And there it's clear that they've fallen into what appears to be a sort of sunken church. And it's decrepit and toxified by some sort of cosmic force that's in the water at the bottom of the cave. This is the same cave that we've seen in the movie's cold open, which caused two dogs to become physically fused to one another in a really gruesome introduction. So naturally, I guess Tim and Millie drink the water in the bottom of this cave to survive, which I just found really hard to accept. And then eventually the leads to them becoming not just emotionally attached, but physically, physically attached. They escape the cave, but this kind of SAP, like glue, begins to adhere them or bind them together. And it's a. It's a really stupid setup for a pretty smartly constructed movie. This invisible force keeps pulling them toward each other no matter how they feel about their relationship or even how far away they are from one another. There's a pretty clever sequence where we really understand what's happened. When Millie goes for a drive one day, I think she's headed off to work and Tim's taking a shower. And inside of the shower's four walls, he gets kind of bonked around like a pinball because of the way that he is physically connected to Millie as she is making left turns and right turns on the roadway. It's a pretty cool scene. There are a lot of other examples of this. There are some really high tension ones. There's something a little bit strange about the movie, though. Brie and Franco are both very good in this movie. Franco is usually more of a livewire type as a screen presence. Here, he's a sad sack. Brie is a little bit more standard fare. She's usually very exceptional as a perky, regular gal trying to make it all work, her new job and her boyfriend. With these loser equalities and her domesticated future. She's a really sensitive and smart actor and she's fun to watch. Slowly realize and accept that her boyfriend's paranoia about this condition is actually more real than it seems. The movie has a couple of really amusing set pieces that find Brie and Franco being drawn together, their bodies kind of contorting until they're affixed when they learn that muscle relaxers serve as like a depressant for this force that's keeping them together. There's this great shot chaser scene where they hoover up a bunch of crushed up pills and then this Chekhov's power saw slices them apart. It's kind of worth the price of admission, but it is an unsubtle scene in a series of them. There's another one in which the couple literally becomes stuck together inside of each other while having sex in a bathroom stall. That kind of keeps hammering home its core theme. You know, when you're in deep in a relationship, you can feel stuck for better or worse. And so the movie resolves itself in a little bit of a groan worthy way so that we're kind of deep into spoiler territory. If you haven't seen Together and you don't want it spoiled for you, maybe fast forward a few minutes or so. But eventually the movie decides that the sunken church that we saw earlier in the film and which Tim eventually returns to to investigate, is the former site of an ancient culture that preaches the transformative power of soulmate fusion in which two people are literally, literally wedded together into a single organism. And Tim and Millie have been resisting making this big commitment throughout the film and they're magically, almost demonically connected. They fight and they fight and they fight this union until they finally just decide to succumb and be together as one forever. And the movie ends as Millie's parents show up for pre planning, pre planned lunch at their home and discover that Tim and Millie are now one seemingly, you know, binary single person who I guess we would call Tilly. And so Tilly greets their parents and it's a little bit of a too cute button on a movie that wants to have it both ways. I think as like a super serious exploration of commitment and also a gross out physical horror comedy. And Together isn't bad. I, I mostly enjoyed myself with the movie and I, I don't want to pick on it too much compared to Weapons, but it does underscore where I think horror was or has been what kinds of movies tend to rise to the surface, especially those through the smaller super indies like neon and a 24 versus what old school studio horror suspense films were about and could accomplish and maybe hopefully will begin to accomplish again soon. Which leads me, of course, to weapons. So weapons, as I mentioned, written and directed by Craigger, this is his second feature after Barbarian. It stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden, Aaron Reich, Austin Abrams, Carrie Christopher Benedict Wong and Amy Madigan. And it's shot by Larkin Sapley. He shot everything everywhere, all at once. And a couple of other great films. The logline is simple. You've probably seen the trailers. We've been hyping this movie on the show for a little while, in part because of how much Chris and I really loved Barbarian and because Amanda and I saw this trailer at Cinemacon and we were very excited. And even before that, there was news of a large bidding war for this script in Hollywood. And there's some mythos, and part of that mythos is around the idea of this being what Zach has described as Magnolia meets Hereditary, which of course is a big fat bullseye for me and anybody who knows what I like. So the story of the movie is one night. All but one children from Justine Gandy's classroom mysteriously run off into the night. Justine and the rest of the community are left questioning who or what is behind the children's disappearance. And so what are the takeaways here? An original horror thriller from a. Direct from a writer director is. Is. Is my favorite thing in all of the movies. My favorite filmmakers have all more or less worked in the genre. Jordan Peele has been the example I have cited most often since we started doing this show in 2017. He was one of the first guests on the show. And somewhat amusingly, Peele reportedly was really pissed that his company, Monkeypaw, wasn't able to lock down the weapon script as a. As a production partner. When it hit that bidding war stage at studios, it did eventually go to Warner Brothers. And it makes sense, you know, this is a movie that is made in his image. It's made in the image of John Carpenter and Alfred Hitchcock and Polanski and Argento and Park Chan Wook and Sam Fuller. And on down the line, there's a long strain of movie history. It's a hypertautical, tightly structured, engagingly unfolding mystery nightmare. It's a little weird, it's a lot funny. It's very discomforting at times. Sharp performances and an absolute smash ola of an ending. So here are five Things that I really, really liked about this movie. And I'll try to keep it as vague as I can before getting into spoiler territory so people can decide whether or not they want to see this movie. I recommend that you do. It is one of my favorites. So anyway, like I said, it was hyped as Magnolia, but horror due to this multi character interconnected structure and the structure of the movie is the first thing that I think is really, really impressive. There are definitely some similarities to PTA's somewhat beloved, somewhat maligned LA Epic that led to a kind of crash out for him and a re imagination of his career. But in that movie there is a sad sack mustachioed cop played by John C. Reilly. And in this movie there is a sad sack mustachioed cop played by Alden Ehrenreich. And like the somewhat unstable, substance dependent woman who disrupts Riley's life in that movie, there is one in this movie. Melora Walters is in Magnolia. Julia Garner, who plays Justine Gandy the teacher, is in this film. There are other, there are some other superficial similarities to Magnolia in this movie. There's the striking needle drops and really this sense of chaos rippling through a community and then being met by the violent randomness of of the universe as like a defining aspect of modern life. This movie, it feels very much in conversation with that. But Craig's movie is two hours, it's compact and it's frenzied in a way that Magnolia is not. It's really a movie about suburban panic that has as much in common with I think the Twilight Zone's landmark episode the Monsters are due on Maple street than like an Altman style ensemble drama. And the way that each of the seven key characters stories are told is, is not a tableau about the wide ranging community of an American city and the class and the generational divide that ripples through. This is a movie about characters literally colliding into each other, confronting the rage and fear that befalls this town when these kids disappear. And where each of these characters story starts and ends before the next one picks up is this ingenious trick of screenwriting. It's never all in the same place. And it allows for both character development and for the plot to unfurl excitingly but kind of at the proper intervals. You know, each character gets their own chapter and where we jump into their life at this stage of this crisis is fascinating. At my screening there was a pause between each chapter section because of the anticipation that Craigger strikes through each section of the story. And as the revelations drew close, the connections from the previous chapters, you could revel in the convergences, right? You got to see this movie in a theater with a big crowd because the sense of, like, something has just happened and I need to look around to see how everybody else feels about it is really runs deeply into this movie. So that's the first thing, the structure. The second thing is the performances. So just like Barbarian, this is a movie that is dancing on a very narrow line between horror and comedy. Weapons leans more suspense than barbarians, kind of tonal whiplash from section to section. But by doing the exact same thing that the recent Naked Gun movie did, it really does succeed. So Craig has cast some serious heavyweight actors, right? Like Julia Garner, Josh Brolin in a movie that has ghoulish freakouts, tonal absurdity, laugh out loud, jump scare reactions. Brolin in particular has one of the funniest post scare laugh lines I've heard in a movie in some time. In Barbarian, Craigger weaponized Justin Long's kind of affable smarminess so well. And he does the same thing here with Benedict Wong and Austin Abrams, two very funny actors who you wouldn't call comedians, but are very good at pushing comedy in a drama. And then Carrie. Christopher plays Alex Lilly. He's the glue of the story. He's the one student who remains after the disappearance of these other children. And Christopher has a really tough job in this film. He is proximate to so much of the madness and has to have a steely reserve once his role in the story is revealed. It's an amazing child performance. And then there's the coup de grace performance in the movie. This is an actor who I did not know was in this movie when I sat down to see it. They're not featured prominently in the trailer. It's Amy Madigan, the longtime actress who you probably know best from Field of Dreams. She is a critical figure in the story, and she brings a wild blend of elderly fragility and warmth and a really horrifying menace. And so I won't say more than that yet. The third thing is the filmmaking. So cragger, I think, has really leveled up in this respect. The camera in this movie is flying around and it's always moving quick, zooms in and out or on a dolly, following characters racing down hallways or dark corridors, peering around the corners of whatever terrifying thing is on the other side. The movie is very slick and graceful. It kind of glides along with great, great pace. I'm reluctant to compare the movie to The Shining. For obvious reasons, I think that's a little unfair to it. But when you are watching the Shining, you can feel yourself almost being carried by the camera to the next unnerving image and idea. You're on a journey. And I did feel that same feeling here watching this movie. There's a near constant sense of what's next. That the images that Cragger creates combined with the score that he helped to co write, which drives this woozy concern that is all throughout this movie. And anytime it starts to shift into a character drama about people at a stuck point in their lives, something really scary and seemingly random races into the frame, forcing you to think about this urgent question of what the hell happened to these kids? And there are a lot of mechanical choices that go into making movies like this work, especially in horror. You can feel directors in post production manipulating the audiences with foley or score or manufactured scares. And one of the things that I like about Weapons is, is that the scary moments, and there are three or four times when you really want to close your eyes or look away, are not really like that. They're constructed, of course, they're written, but they're upsetting and tense in part because they're logical manifestations of what the characters are going through. And when those characters are attacked, poked by needles, stabbed, thrashed by oncoming traffic, you can feel the mania of this world being unleashed. And it's all disturbing and fantastical, but also very grounded, which leads me to themes. This is the fourth thing that I think is really special about this movie. And this is really what differentiates it from Together. Weapons is about something. Of course, it's not an ornate metaphor, however, whereas Together is an extended metaphor. This is a child abduction movie. This is a movie that you can watch purely as a plot exercise, as a corker. And it is a corker. I'll cite a few movies that are kind of in the tradition of this. When we get into the syllabus at the end of this conversation that I'm having with myself. But it's really a movie about losing someone you care about and the sad desperation that it creates in us and the way that it can infect everything, the way it fosters paranoia and causes you to reach for horrible answers that don't exist, but start to feel real. And then you have no other place to go but to get committed to these answers that you've invented in your own mind. You know, I have lost people very close to me in my life, and this idea resonates with me really deeply. And the 2025 movie that weapons neatly maps onto that would make for a nifty double feature is David Cronenberg's the Shrouds. They're made in entirely different registers, but they're about the same feeling of panic and despair and awful decision making in the face of death. And unlike Together, which takes this quite literal approach to its Big Idea in an effort to quote unquote, elevate the material, Weapons mostly just plays as a crazy movie that keeps escalating with purpose without the rising power of an elevator. It is going up incrementally and getting crazier and crazier and higher and higher, but not too fast. And if you don't want to tangle with Cragger's big feelings inside the movie, you really don't have to. It features some indelible horror movie images, gnarly kills, great music, and last but not least, the ending. So I have talked in the past about the feeling I get in a movie that I'm really enjoying and starting to realize that I love when we get to the final stretch. So I start leaning forward in my seat and I start pulling at the fabric in the movie theater chair armrest. I've talked about this while watching. I don't know, the final 15 minutes of Whiplash is an example. I think I talked about that in the Rewatchables episode that I did with Bill some years ago. And the bowling alley sequence of There Will Be Blood is an example of this too, when a movie is kind of piercing my skin and getting into my bloodstream and weapons final 15 minutes did this for me. So we're getting into major spoiler territory here. But the final two segments of the film reveal not just what has happened to the 17 children who go missing, but but who was responsible and how it happened. This is a very difficult needle to thread, and I suspect some may feel let down by the hype machine that I am helping to power on this podcast. And I must admit, an initial feeling of kind of queasiness as I started piecing together that and again, we're in spoiler territory here in the construction of the movie. Ant Gladys, who comes to stay with Alex and sort of take over his life, is a is a demonic witch who's controlling these children and her family and wreaking havoc on this town. And I thought at first, like a witch. I don't know, that seems a little pat. But it's what the movie does with Gladys and what Amy Madigan brings to the character that quickly shifted my confusion or slight letdown into a kind of fascination. And then the movie sets you up for this incredible moment of joy. So Gladys powers of mind and body control are really fascinatingly rendered in this movie. They're not just supernatural, but she almost becomes, like, superhuman. She starts to feel like Zod from Superman in the way that she can kind of presage another character's actions, get the upper hand, and then until she doesn't. And when she doesn't, her plan backfires. And our core characters are kind of relieved of their hypnosis. And then the kids are freed from one version of mind control and locked into another. And they begin racing up the stairs at the end of this movie. And when the kids started racing up the stairs and the moment of recognition of her loss of power that Madigan expresses. And you know that we are about to watch something pretty crazy. I didn't realize how crazy by the time we got to the end of it, but pretty crazy. I haven't been that locked in in a movie theater seat in a long time. I could feel my knees shaking and my feet tapping and the hair standing up. And as the kids started crashing through the windows and over the yard fences and across the backyards of their town, really to annihilate their terrorizer, they tear Gladys inch from inch in an extremely gory and hilarious denouement. I just let out a huge burst of sigh of relief. Laughter. You know, this is like an exciting, insane, gory, funny, euphoric convergence. And what starts out as this cold Fincherian character study morphs into a relationship drama and then into a detective movie and then into a stoner comedy and then into a witch horror and then into cannibal holocaust. And it's just delightful. It's. It's expertly made and it is so exciting to have something like this. I. You may be listening to this and thinking, like, ah, you're overselling it or you're overhyping it. I'm just saying, for me, this is my favorite stuff. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Having the right people in your corner can make all the difference. Fall festival movie season is upon us. And it's always a really stressful time here at the Big Picture. Luckily, I have Amanda at my side to help me determine what movies we're going to see, which ones she'll take care of. And I also have my family at home taking care of me, and I'm really grateful for that. And like those people, State Farm is there to help you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. Go [e-mail] or use the award winning app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Pretty Litter. Keeping your house clean when you've got a cat is no easy feat. But with Pretty Litter, you don't have to choose between a fresh house and a healthy cat. This litter is practically magic. It's low dust, controls odors and lasts up to a whole month. But the best part? It monitors your cat's health every time they use the box. Plus, Pretty Litter ships free right to your door so no heavy bags to carry and no last minute pet store runs right now. Save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy at PrettyLitter.com BigPicture that's PrettyLitter.com BigPicture to save 20% on your first order and Get a free cat toy. Pretty Litter.com BigPicture Pretty Litter cannot detect every feline health issue or prevent or diagnose diseases. A diagnosis can only come from a licensed veterinarian. Terms and conditions apply. See Cite for details. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. When you release a movie, the first thing you want to do is make sure people know about it. And even more importantly, you want to make sure that people who like the genre know it's out. Because horror fans are more likely to go see new horror movies. Disney fans will go see new Disney movies. Rom com fans will go see new rom com movies. Targeting the right audience is key when it comes to marketing. If you're selling expensive new kitchen appliances, you probably want to sell to people who actually like to cook, not people who rely on food delivery services for every meal. And that's the tricky part. Making sure your message gets to the right people. You have to use the right tools. If you're in B2B marketing, that means using LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has a network of over 130 million decision makers and the targeting tools to make sure you're connecting with the right ones. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills or company revenue. So you can stop wasting your time and budget on the wrong people. LinkedIn will even give you a hundred dollar credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com thebigpicture that's LinkedIn.com thebigpicture terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ad it did make me think of a lot of movies. And I didn't want to do a syllabus as a standalone video or on Social ahead of time because I didn't want to give away not just the reveal about Aunt Gladys, but about all of the. What I perceive to be the myriad influences. And if you listen to my conversation with Craigger a little bit later on, you'll hear him kind of like not only pitch his influences, but kind of joust with some of the ones that I suggested. Nevertheless, these are some movies that I think you might find interesting if you really dug weapons and can see pieces here and there. The first is the British horror film Village of the Damned from 1960, which is about a micro generation of children who are all conceived and born on the same day, who all have shocks of blonde hair and who can emit powerful energy from their bodies. The movie was later remade by John Carpenter in a less successful remake with Christopher Reef. But the eerie quality, the oddness of little kids and what is really going on with little kids is really exemplified in this movie, which is kind of schlocky and hasn't aged super great, but it's still kind of fun as a, as a, you know, an originating text of mid century horror. The next movie is Rosemary's Baby. There is a lot of, I thought a lot of Casa Nevetta and her insane scheme with Rosemary in this movie in the final stretch. And you'll see the makeup choices that are made by for Amy Madigan kind of fit with Ruth Gordon's look in that movie quite a bit. The other one is somewhat obscure. I don't think Zach was thinking of this movie, but it is a good fit for a syllabus. It's the Blood on Satan's Claw, which is a British folk horror from 1971, directed by Piers Haggard. And it's about a town and specifically a group of young children who are exposed to Satan's remains, literally his skeleton, and it causes some devilish changes inside of them. A little bit of that in this movie as well. I thought of the Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Philip Kaufman version from 1978, quite a bit. Craigger didn't really. He said he was not really a Body Snatchers guy. But there is something about body and mind control and the idea of a prevailing force that overtakes our consciousness and our physical form that is a huge part of what transpires in the second half of Weapons that I think makes a lot of sense. I Also kicked Ordinary People to Craigger. He didn't really vibe with that one. But Ordinary People is a movie about a family in the suburbs who don't really know how to deal with tremendous loss. In the case of that movie, which is Robert Redford's directorial debut and a movie that won best Picture A Family, Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore have lost a son. And their other son, played by Tim Hutton, is trying to figure out how to cope with it and go forward. And all of them are kind of at cross purposes and dealing in different ways. And this is definitely a movie about Josh Brolin's father character who makes it his mission to figure out what happened to his son. But also it becomes a movie about the dawning realization of what you didn't say, how you didn't take care of your family and communicate with your loved ones in the way that you felt you should have when they were here and in front of you. And there's a particularly scary but emotionally effective scene between Brolin in a kind of dream state. This is a riveting moment in the movie where he is in this kind of dream state. He's been sleeping in his son's bed. He gets out of bed and he thinks he hears his son, I believe his name is Michael, leaving the house. And he follows him out of the house and he follows him through the neighborhood and he follows him to another house. And when he gets to another house, he sees this image of an assault rifle high in the sky. And it's as close as Weapons gets to a kind of Lynchian moment. And it's unexplained. And we're meant to accept the dream logic of this moment for Brolin's character. And when he goes into the house in which the assault rifle appeared over the roof, he finds his son sleeping in a bed. And he tells him how he feels, how he. He. What he wished he had said to him when he was there, when he could reach him and touch him and talk to him and how important he is to him. And he's breaking down. And just as he's breaking down, a terrifying thing happens in part as a kind of manifestation of the fact that he's engaging with this like, post traumatic psychosis. And Ordinary People is not a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination. And. But it kind of is, kind of taps into that feeling of deep, unimaginable loss and our inability to resolve the feeling and to just accept it over time. And Weapons is a really good example of that too. I thought of Some other movies, too, that are maybe a little bit more fun than ordinary People. The Witches of Eastwick, the George Miller movie, popped into my head in terms of what witches can do, in terms of casting spells and controlling minds and bodies. There's some really fun stuff in that movie, especially a kind of bravura sequence with Jack Nicholson in a church being controlled by the three witches in that story. I thought of Carpenter and they live, and the idea of living in a society where not as all as it seems. And as a companion to that, I thought of the Burbs, the Joe Dante movie, which is one of the simultaneously funniest and scariest what's in that House movies. That movie is a huge movie for my wife, and she grew up loving it. And so we always like to watch the burbs. And there's definitely a little bit of the burbs in this, you know. Shortcuts from Robert Altman is one of the signature influences on Paul Thomas Anderson and his movie. Magnolia owes a great debt not just to the big sprawling ensemble movies that Altman made, like MASH and like Nashville, but also to shortcuts in 93, the Raymond Carver adaptations about lives of people living in Los Angeles at a certain time in history and the ways that they connect or do not connect. I thought of Adam Ngoyen's the Sweet Hereafter, the 1997 Russell Banks adaptation about a community that has lost a large number of children to a terrible accident, and the way that people don't really know how to cope with that and what happens in the aftermath of that. I've mentioned Magnolia. I thought a little bit of Todd Field's Little Children, which is an adaptation of a Tom Parada novel about the insecurity and quiet desperation of life in the Suburbs, which is a movie I've always liked, starring Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson. In terms of pure standard issue horror, I think James Wan's Insidious is the movie that has the most similar kind of visual palette. And the way that young children intersect with this kind of psychotic nether region feels like there's something going on there, too, that's in conversation. It's obvious that Prisoners, the Denis Villeneuve, Roger Deakins child abduction film, that is a little bit of a mystery movie, a little bit of a movie about grief, a little bit of a movie about Hugh Jackman yelling extremely loudly is a big influence on this movie. You can hear Zach talk about that as we get further on. And then, of course, Barbarian, which I think a lot of people have probably Seen by now is streaming on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, it is a movie that is different but connected to this movie. Zach Kreger, he loves basements. That's one thing I'll say. You know, basements figure into this film as well. Weapons is really exciting, and I think you'll get even more excited when you hear me talk with Zach Kreger about it. So let's do that right now. Zack Kreger is back. I'm so excited. We're here to talk about Weapons. This is very exciting, Zach.

[Zach Kreger]

I'm so excited to be here, man. I really enjoyed our last conversation, and I was hoping that we'd get to do it again. And so this is a treat.

[Sean Fennessey]

So I read that Weapons was written before Barbarian. Is that true?

[Zach Kreger]

That's not true.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, before it was released, though.

[Zach Kreger]

That is true. Okay. So, yeah, I wrote it while I was in the edit.

[Sean Fennessey]

So can you describe for me the day you started writing it? Do you remember what happened? What spurred it?

[Zach Kreger]

Well, yeah, I mean, it's. It's. It's a. It was a terrible. It was like a terrible, terrible time for me, you know, so it's not really a secret. I've talked about it before, but, you know, Trevor Moore, who I was in the Whitest Kids with, died very, very suddenly and. And terribly. And I was, you know, going through it, you know, and I was just. I was just feeling all the feelings. I'm still feeling all the feelings. You know, I'm not. I'm not, like, in the clear. And so I just sat down to just start writing, just to. Just to engage with my pain in a way that was, you know, not destructive, but constructive. So I wasn't sitting down to write a movie. I was sitting down to just write to soothe myself and to just tell myself a story about who fucking knows? But, like, it was very clear to me as I was writing what. What I was doing. And so I started with the first line, you know, girls telling a scary story. And, okay, so she goes to school. What happened to her teacher? I mean, literally, sentence by sentence, I'm discovering the story as I go, which is how I kind of wrote Barbarian. And, you know, as I got through the cold open and these kids left, it just felt really, like, soothing and correct. And I knew, okay, I've got a teacher. I've got an angry parent. I kind of knew, like, that's. That's a good place to kind of aim my beginning. And then let's just see where it goes. So in A way it was like another really fun process of discovery and, and, and I didn't really have an ending, you know, and so when you write something like this where you start with the question but you don't know the answer, it's a little daunting because you might not be able to land the plane. And so I probably got about 50 in before I kind of figured out what, what had happened, why these kids did what they did. And that was a good day because I, I was like, oh, I think, I think there's an end to the story that I enjoy. So hopefully other people will.

[Sean Fennessey]

The ending is arguably the best part. So we'll get to that shortly. Thanks.

[Zach Kreger]

It's funny how many people seem to have the opposite attitude.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, I think there is a fine line between the explanation and the ending. And I think that I wonder, okay, I wonder what the take is there. I don't want to. We'll get there shortly. Did your life change at all after Barbarian?

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, it did. Yeah, it did.

[Sean Fennessey]

In what ways?

[Zach Kreger]

Well, I mean, in ways that I no longer was aspiring to hopefully one day get my big break and direct a movie, you know, and Barbarian surprised me and surprised people and so it felt like, okay, it looks like I'm going to get to make another movie. I wasn't prepared for the reception that the script for Weapons was going to get. And so that felt, you know, like very much new territory. It was like, okay, I get to make a movie and I get to make a movie with, with actual resources this time. You know, Barbarians, a four and a half million dollar movie, and Weapons is about, you know, in the neighborhood of 40. So it was, it was a big, a big shift. So, yeah, that, that, that was definitely different. However, I will say this. The only silver lining to the just awful chapter of Trevor's death was that I was allowed the opportunity, or I don't know if it's an opportunity, but I was basically given the chance to write for the sake of urgency and just a genuine place of creativity as opposed to a place of ambition. I was spared from thinking, what's my Barbarian follow up? That wasn't really available to. I couldn't think that way. That's not how I felt. And so I think that whatever people tend to enjoy about this story is probably just because it comes from a place that is not. Yeah, it's not ambitious. Now I'm not gonna pretend like, oh, I'm like such a pure art creative. I mean, I definitely had to go back and put my thinking cap on and try and fix it. My first draft was a total mess, and I had to think, okay, if this is a movie, how can it work? So that stuff is there, but the impetus for it wasn't. Wasn't, like, my follow up.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know, it's really funny that you say that, though, because the next thing I wanted to ask you was that there is something very free and I wrote down the word ambitious about this movie, about the. Even the idea that you could make a movie like this, given where you were at that stage of your life, and that I was curious if, like, making Barbarian, if you had tried to write a movie like this after that movie came out and everybody told you, oh, you're so great, most exciting new voice in horror, would you have been stricken somehow or unable to kind of conceptualize something that doesn't feel kind of stuck in a lot of the typical modes of contemporary horror?

[Zach Kreger]

I don't know if I'll ever know the answer to that question. However, I wrote, you know, right now I'm prepping for a movie that I also wrote after Barbarian and long before Weapons. And, you know, I don't think this one is a product of ambition. And I think it's really fun and careless, and I mean that in the best way, you know. And then the movie that I hope to do after this, I also wrote Before Weapons. And I think it's, like, maybe the best thing I ever wrote. So, I don't know. I mean, like, I've been able to kind of psych myself out of thinking ambitiously for whatever reason, you know. The thing I wrote now, I was like, I'll never direct this. So I'm just going to say, who gives a shit? And just, like, not care. Which is, by the way, the best attitude, you know? If you don't care, you're doing it right. If you care, you know, sometimes I think that's dangerous. Anyway. Yeah, so we'll see. I don't know.

[Sean Fennessey]

Let me ask you about that then, because one of the things that strikes me about the movie, the new movie, is the filmmaking feels like a big step up. It feels more assured. The sound and the score is really impressive. The way the camera moves is kind of amazing. And it does feel like a movie that is written by a guy who's like, I know exactly how to direct this movie. So to hear you say that, that's.

[Zach Kreger]

The way I felt.

[Sean Fennessey]

It is.

[Zach Kreger]

No, no, no. But I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when I'm writing, I'm watching the movie as I'm writing. And so I defin what I want. Like, when the script is done, I have the movie in my head. And so I feel like that was. The other thing is, like, you know, the sale was, like, intimidating and crazy and. But. But I really didn't think, oh, what if I'm not up to the task? You know, I. I have an arrogance in me. And that arrogance is that I know how to make a movie like this. And so I was. I was able to just kind of go for it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Was it intimidating at all to have this large budget and these more famous people in your cast and just a grander scale and in the aftermath of a bidding war? Or were you like, this is exactly where I want to be?

[Zach Kreger]

No, it was where I wanted to be. I felt like I had a clear mission and I was able to get people that could execute the mission. I mean, I was intimidated to meet Josh Brolin the first time, for sure. And that was a crazy. I really didn't do a good job of my first impression with him. I was supposed to go meet him at his house. I sent him the script. I was supposed to go meet him at his house. We're meeting at noon. It's about 11. I figure it'd take me an hour to get to Malibu from where I live in the east side. And so it's like, you know, it's 10:45 maybe. I'm getting ready to go, and I get this phone call from my agent's assistant, and they're like, where are you? I was like, what do you mean? They're like, josh has been waiting for you for 45 minutes. I'm like, oh, my God, dude. I drove like an idiot. All like, you know, I. Or my way. And then I, you know, I ring the doorbell and I'm sweating bullets, and I don't have a good excuse. I was building Legos in my house, just, like, not doing anything. And he just opened the door and was just, like, shaking his head. He's like, what are you. What are you doing, man? I was just like. It's just like, hi, Please respect me and be in my. You know, Trust me. It was. It was a gnarly way to start our relationship. But he's cool, dude. I mean, it was. It was good.

[Sean Fennessey]

He kind of brings that energy to the performance, though, in a good way. So maybe that was helpful.

[Zach Kreger]

What, like a disapproving?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, just, like, frustrated. Like, what's your problem, dude? Yeah, maybe tell me a little bit about the filmmaking. Like, I was really struck by how the camera is constantly moving, zooming in and zooming out, and it feels like it's on a dolly following people, and it's always going around a corner and looking for something new. And that felt very exciting.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, One of my inspirations for that was Son of Saul. Have you seen Son of Saul?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Zach Kreger]

I'm very interested in, like, hyper subjectivity. And so that was something that Larkin stiples my dp, and that's something that we talked about a lot is like, you know, every chapter should be hyper subjective, and so we should always be in a POV or an OTS and, you know, really just living in the perspective of who we're following. And so that was. You know, that was kind of a rule that we set for ourselves really early on, and it just felt like the correct way to tell the story is to just be perched on the shoulder of each protagonist. And, yeah, it was pretty clear early on that that's what we do.

[Sean Fennessey]

Related to that. One thing that I really like about this movie that I think distinguishes it from a lot of its contemporaries is that it is extremely story and character forward. It doesn't mean it doesn't have themes, but it's not doing a thing that I think you find in a lot of horror, where it's sort of like, let's announce the theme and then hold your hand through the theme of the movie all the way through. When you get to the end of this movie, you can think about that. Is that something that comes naturally? Is that something you intellectualize? Or is it just you're doing what you want to do and telling the story you want to tell?

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, well, I really try not to intellectualize anything, really, when I'm writing, so. No, I mean, honestly, this is like. It started with me kind of obsessing over how I felt about Trevor, and then the end of it is me kind of obsessing over my dad. And I don't know how those two things connect, but somehow, to me, they did. And so it's really. It's a very personal movie. I don't have a statement. The movie's not political to me. It's a. It's a completely introverted kind of diary entry. So. Yeah, I don't even know if I just answered your question, but.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, you did. You did.

[Zach Kreger]

Okay, cool.

[Sean Fennessey]

I heard you say something funny as well. That the way that the kids are running, leaving their homes is something you did just because you thought it looked cool and didn't have some, like, broad Easter egg rationalization to It.

[Zach Kreger]

No, there's no. Yeah, there's no meaning there. But it does. It does to me. It just invites a little more kind of speculation. You know, it's like, if they just ran out, normally it'd be like, oh, that's weird. But if they all run out with a kind of bizarre posture, then it's like, okay, something. There's another dimension at work here, and I don't know what it is. And so it just felt provocative.

[Sean Fennessey]

When you're pursuing ideas like this that are, you know, genre focused and a little left field, like, are you. Do you have sounding boards? Do you have people that you're sending this to or saying, like, what if I did this? Or is it. Is it very private?

[Zach Kreger]

It's pretty private. I got stuck on weapons early on and I did have like a kind of a brainstorm session with a buddy of mine who helped me kind of unstick. So that was, you know, that, that. That was good. But I don't do that too much. I'm not. I'm definitely not one of those, like, let's go to dinner so I can pitch you my movie kind of guys, you know. Ok, right in seclusion a little bit more.

[Sean Fennessey]

Did you rehearse with the cast? No.

[Zach Kreger]

I mean, one scene, the bar scene with Alden and Julia. We took a weekend and we ran that, like, at my house in Atlanta for just a couple of hours, you know, but we were already in the middle of production, so. No, I'm definitely not a big rehearsal guy. Not for any reason. I don't have anything against rehearsal. But, you know, schedules being what they are, people are flying in midway through, and it just wasn't really available. We did a table read over zoom, and that was kind of like the rehearsal, honestly, which is like, I don't love doing a table read over zoom. That's pretty awful. But so. Yeah, no, not so much.

[Sean Fennessey]

Were you very tight to the script during the making or was there room?

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, very tight to the script. Yeah. I think there's a couple of ad libs. I don't want to pretend there's none, but, you know. But generally it's pretty much verbatim.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I was curious about that because the movie is so tightly constructed, and I was wondering how much of what you filmed is everything that you filmed in the movie because of the way that the narrative unfurls.

[Zach Kreger]

Now there's a scene where Alden goes to a doctor and gets his hand checked out and that just the pacing didn't work. There's a scene Where James the junkie goes to a drug dealer to try and sell his little gizmo that he stole, and he gets punched in the face and kicked out. Which is a really fun scene, but it just felt like we've got to move. And so they were pacing considerations, but only those two, I think.

[Sean Fennessey]

How many times can Austin Abrams get punched in one movie? I guess is a question.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Question about writing scare scenes. So when you're writing one, and there are a few really good ones in this movie, are you writing what scares you or what you think scares other people?

[Zach Kreger]

I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. It must be what scares me. I mean, if there's. I'll tell you this. I'm not sitting on something that's terrifying to me that I wouldn't dare put in a movie. You know, if I. If I have access to anything scary, believe me, I'm going to try and capitalize on it. So I think it's probably both.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, I ask because there are some recurring. The fear of being poked is something that pops up a lot in this.

[Zach Kreger]

Let me think about that. What do you mean?

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, needles.

[Zach Kreger]

I mean, obviously we have the needleworks.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sharps. Just the sharp sticks piercing the finger.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

This idea of, like, being penetrated by something sharp and blood appearing and then that being a kind of recurring image in this movie is unmistakable.

[Zach Kreger]

Not the first horror movie to utilize being stabbed with things.

[Sean Fennessey]

You're zooming in. Right. On bleeding fingers a few times in this movie, you know.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah. Fair. Fair.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is there. There's not any, like, Freudian subtext there to someone getting underneath there.

[Zach Kreger]

There very well may be, Sean, but I. I haven't yet identified it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, there's like a second layer to that, too, which the movie literalizes and I thought was really interesting, which is kind of the fear of infection, you know? At one point, Paul asks about sprinkled.

[Zach Kreger]

In on purpose, you know?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Kreger]

Like, even she's got the parasites on TV and she's teaching a lesson on. I mean. Yeah. I'm taking a page out of every movie ever made where someone's teaching a class, you know, and they have to kind of explain the subtext of the movie and the lesson. So I'm guilty of that.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it works really well. And I don't know if I would have glommed onto that if I didn't get a chance to see it a second time. So it's not.

[Zach Kreger]

Have you seen it twice?

[Sean Fennessey]

I did. Well, I kind of snuck into the premiere. And then I saw a press screening.

[Zach Kreger]

Oh, you were at the premiere? Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It was really fun. It was. That crowd was cool. That was a great way to see the movie.

[Zach Kreger]

I don't. I haven't been to enough premieres to know if, like, our premiere crowds just kind of like, you know, fish in a barrel. I. I think probably, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, they are. Everyone's full of shit, and they're like, this is my best friend's movie. But, yeah, the applause at the chapter breaks was incredibly cool and just made the movie that was surprising feel fun, and in a way that is unusual. Anyway, how about the way that comedy leaks into the movie? We did talk about this when we talked about barbarian and using, you know, your previous life as a creative person and making it fit. This is different. This definitely leans more classic suspense, horror. But there are a couple of laugh moments. Brolin in the bed is, like, one of the hardest moments I've laughed in movies in years.

[Zach Kreger]

Rolling in the bed is a line I put in because I thought it was funny. Beyond that, I got to be honest with you, because I've been hearing this a lot lately. It's like, oh, you know, so much comedy in this. It's such a comedy. And I was a little like, is it really? I don't. I don't think of this as being a funny movie. That Brolin in the bedline sure. Can't really think of another one where I was like, this'll be funny, you know, like, maybe. Maybe Austin when he's on the phone calling about the kids and seeing the wanted poster. To me, I. I get that's funny, but I'm surprised people are. Are taken by. By the. And I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's because you have this combination of actors, too, like Austin, like June, even, like, Benedict Wong, who are, like, pretty funny, you know, they're not. They're not comedians, but who are kind of naturally funny, and so they feel comfortable riffing in an otherwise extremely tense moment in a movie, you know?

[Zach Kreger]

Absolutely. And I do realize, you know, when I'm casting, I have to have people that are funny. Even Josh. Josh is very, very funny. And Alden is like, dude, hail Caesar. Alden is, like, the funniest person in the world. So, like, you know, I definitely. That is a requisite for. Or someone I want to work with is they have to have timing, you know? But to me, it's like, I hope it's funny and like, a. I'm not comparing myself to Alexander Payne, but that sort of, like, kind of dry humor that can, like, bloom a little bit here and there, but it's always a little funny. It's kind of what I hope I'm able to do. You know, that's what I'm always kind of aiming for. But I don't know if I'm successful.

[Sean Fennessey]

Seeing the movie at the premiere. I did not know Amy Madigan was in this movie before I saw it. And you brought her on stage, and I don't. Did you say you're my angel? You used a very warm descriptor of her.

[Zach Kreger]

No, I said my dream come true.

[Sean Fennessey]

My dream come true. That's what it was.

[Zach Kreger]

Which is true.

[Sean Fennessey]

And she's amazing and obviously very important to this movie. But why did you say my dream come true to her? And how did she come to be in the movie?

[Zach Kreger]

You know, that part is so. It's just such a. A balancing act. You need somebody who can be completely ebullient and spunky and disarming and kind of inviting in a repulsive way, and that's a tough one. Who also has a lethal old reptilian core that is readily accessible. And you watch Amy in Field of Dreams, and you get side A. And then you watch her in Gone Baby, Gone or Carnival, and you get side baby, and it's like. And so I met with her again in Malibu. I guess everyone's ing Malibu. I drove out and had lunch with her at this restaurant, and I was driving out there, and I kind of knew. I was like, God, Amy's. I just knew, like, she was going to be right for this part, But I have a habit of, like, offering people roles very impulsively. And I was like, don't offer her the part, Zach. Like, you know, leave the lunch. Tell her you're still in the process, and, you know, you'll get back to her. Like, you know, be cool. And, dude, I'm telling you, before the lunch hit the table, I was like, only you can play this part. You have to play this part. You know, because she just sitting there and looking at her and kind of just studying her, I was just like, this is it. Like, this is the person. Like, she has everything I need, and she's so cool, and she liked the role, and she got it, and I was just like, there's nobody else. So I just lucked out. You know, that's a hard role. You write it, and you're like, I hope there's a human being that can do this. And Then you get Amy mad again. You're like, thank you, God.

[Sean Fennessey]

You can see the movie going belly up if it's the wrong person, because could you imagine? Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of related to what I assume you're hearing a little bit of the feedback on. And the movie is really interesting because the mystery of it and the fact that, you know, Josh's section is very much like a detective story. You've got like a cop on the case. There are all of these elements that are very Fincherian thriller through the first hour or so. And then it does take a hard, hard turn into metaphysical supernatural horror movie stuff. And it feels like. I'm curious if you feel like you are intentionally wrong footing the audience, with the exception of a handful of the scares. And maybe that's what some of the reaction you're getting because the conclusion of the movie is like absolute thrill a minute ripping the cushion out of your movie theater seat. But you have to get on board with the big choice you make to explain what is going on.

[Zach Kreger]

I didn't set out to wrong foot the audience. I just. I just wrote the movie that just felt like what the movie wanted to be, you know, so I. I'm not doing it on purpose. I'm aware, you know, that Barbarian is a very divisive movie. And I think that the main criticism that I hear again and again is like, you know, first half great, second half, stupid. You know, I didn't sign up for that.

[Sean Fennessey]

And that was my review.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, you know, Yeah, I heard you. So I think I am sensitive to that, but I also am like, you know, whatever. Look, all I want to do is write my favorite movie and make my favorite movie, and this is what I like. So, you know, I can't. I can't really care about anything other than what, what am I gonna sleep soundly having made? So I don't know. This is it.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have a bad habit as a movie dork of telling people what movies they should watch after they've seen a new movie. You know, like. Oh, that's really.

[Zach Kreger]

That's funny.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do you have.

[Zach Kreger]

What do you say?

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, for this one, I, you know, I'll pull up my list if you want. There's like a bunch.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, dude, do it, do it, do it. Okay, I'll throw out the ones that I would. I would love out there. And they're so obvious. They're the lowest hanging fruit and it's like, not creative that I would say. Magnolia Hereditary prisoners, picnic at Hanging Rock.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, yeah.

[Zach Kreger]

Okay. The The Son of Saul. Just visually and you know, Pulp Fiction. I never thought about Pulp Fiction then everybody is saying it's got a lot of Pulp Fiction. I'm like, you know what? I would be the biggest liar in the world if I didn't say Pulp Fiction changed my life when it came out. So that's gotta be baked in there. And then I heard you say this because people were telling me to listen to your bidding episode, which I did. And when you said the Needful Things trailer, I was like, dude, that is in there. Because I had the same feelings when I saw the Needful Things commercial on tv. I was like, that's the movie for me. I am all in. And the imagination. The movie I imagined was not the movie I caught meaningful things, but the movie I imagined when I saw that trailer was just like a very special movie. And so maybe that the promise of that trailer seared something into me that I always wanted. And I. And I. And I think it could be some. Some sort of subconscious, you know, aim toward that.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a good one. I mean I had a few of those movies on the. On the list. Obviously Magnolia for sure. Because people. The trades have just been pushing the Magnolia, but whole.

[Zach Kreger]

And that came from me, by the way. They asked me like, how would you like us to describe this to. And I said Hereditary meets Magnolia. So I'm culpable of that.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's interesting because I do feel like there is certainly the multi character kind of some of the convergence of Magnolia. But I don't know. Your movie feels.

[Zach Kreger]

Well, the Cold Open is a direct homage to the Magnolia Cold Open. And the mustache that Alden Ehrenreich wears is literally. No, I mean literally. We went to the. Whatever. I'm just gonna make a bad joke.

[Sean Fennessey]

Listen, man, trust me. I know as somebody who lived with magnolia Deeply in 1999, I get it. And even like Julia being a little bit like Melora Walters in some ways and they're kind of fucked up relationship. I get all that.

[Zach Kreger]

I didn't even think about that. I didn't even. Yes, I mean totally.

[Sean Fennessey]

There's totally some of that. But I just meant like that's your movie is a suburbs movie. Magnolia is a city.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, for sure.

[Sean Fennessey]

And there is like a different energy to those things. But I'm telling you about your own movie. I wrote down Rosemary. Rosemary's Baby. That's. That's definitely feels like some. Some Rosemary's Baby in it.

[Zach Kreger]

Okay, okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

Not in like the glasses.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fun. Oh yeah. And of course. Of course. Obviously, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, all the Body Snatchers movies.

[Zach Kreger]

Okay, those aren't big for me, so maybe I'm going to take your word on that. I just don't loom large in my Ordinary people.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do you ever see that?

[Zach Kreger]

You know what? Long, long time ago. I mean, it's not a big one for me.

[Sean Fennessey]

Suburban families struggling to cope with loss and looking for answers that don't exist is.

[Zach Kreger]

Sounds fun.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a blast. Best picture winner. Do you ever see the Witches of Eastwick?

[Zach Kreger]

Yes. Yes, I did. Again, that's not a big one for me. Although I do love George Miller, so you'd think I would have given it more time.

[Sean Fennessey]

You don't have to say you like it. Just something that occurred to me. Again, this is my bad habit.

[Zach Kreger]

Sorry, I wasn't clear on the rules of this.

[Sean Fennessey]

What about Little children?

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, I saw it when it came out. I saw it in the theater. I thought it was cool. Haven't seen it since.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay. Look at you. Just not enjoying all the movies that I thought of. No, I love it, dude.

[Zach Kreger]

It doesn't mean I don't like them. There are some movies that matter in a. In a weird way, and there's others that you really like, but they don't.

[Sean Fennessey]

What? What is it with you in basements?

[Zach Kreger]

Oh, I don't know. They're just fun. It's easy. It's. Dude, it's just easy. Look, Barbarian, I. I was very nervous about having a basement scene in this movie because of Barbarian, but, like, that's where the kids were. Oh, shit. Major spoilers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sorry, I will have spoiled already by this episode.

[Zach Kreger]

Okay, cool. But that's just like, you know, I got James in the house, and I was like, dude, this is the only move. And. And honestly, Sean, like, I really mean this and I don'. Sound obnoxious when I say it, but I try so hard to just turn my brain off when I'm writing completely and to just really be absent from the. From the creative process. So I just let it. I let it be what it is. And so that's what it was.

[Sean Fennessey]

Where does this movie take place?

[Zach Kreger]

Maybrook, Pennsylvania. Which is where I kind of thought Prisoners took place in Pennsylvania. I found out later I think Prisoners was supposed to take place in Maine. Okay. I'm not sure, but, you know, I was thinking about, you know, Deakin's photography, and I was just thinking Prisoners. Just visually so phenomenal. And it's weird because, you know, we were shooting in Atlanta and I was. I was Just like, well, I'm never going to find the prisoners neighborhood in Atlanta. You know, I want to shoot this up and, you know, I want to shoot in Vancouver or, you know, Seattle or somewhere, Oregon. And then I found out they shot prisoners in Atlanta, and. And I went to that neighborhood. It actually wasn't quite right for what we needed. So. So, you know, I. It's. It's funny, you know, I was like the dog that caught the mail truck there, and I realized, no, it's not. That's not the right vibe. So I wouldn't.

[Sean Fennessey]

I wouldn't. I don't know, is it communicated? That's Pennsylvania. Maybe I just missed that when I was watching the movie.

[Zach Kreger]

I mean. No, you wouldn't know. It's like the license plates say Pennsylvania. I think his. Like, his. His badge says Pennsylvania or something like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is it. Is it present day?

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah. Ring cans, you know?

[Sean Fennessey]

Right.

[Zach Kreger]

Of course.

[Sean Fennessey]

What was. When you were making the movie, was there anything that didn't work or you couldn't make happen that you had conceived of?

[Zach Kreger]

Great question. No, oddly, no. In fact, you know, the final. The denouement, you know, with the final chase for the kids, you know, running around. So in the script, that was actually just Gladys runs outside. They jump out the window. They get her in the front yard. And then as we were in prep, I was like. I just. I was like, you know what, dude? Like, I think that if we go Raising Arizona with this, you know, we go full point break, like, it's going to really. People are going to walk out with a smile. And that was not a cool conversation to spring on your line, producer and everybody. Like, I think we're going to need four days, you know, and five more locations. And we're going to destroy houses that we got to find. And. And just please let me do this. But. But to everyone's credit, nobody was, like, giving me the hard pushback. Everyone's just kind of like, this, this is going to hurt, but we're going to make it work, and thank God we did. I honestly think that it was. I think it changed the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, two things about that. I do want to hear you talk about it a little bit, because it is absolutely thrilling. However, you said you're not writing a lot of laugh lines, but there's literally a cutaway to a guy mowing a lawn and the kids run through the yard.

[Zach Kreger]

Of course, obviously, I knew that was gonna be funny.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a great joke moment. You know, you said raising Arizona.

[Zach Kreger]

I shot that scene twice. I Shot that scene twice. Because the first time I shot it, I shot it with a guy who just wasn't coming together. And I was not happy with how it worked. And then my boom op who's like this metalhead, Marty. What's up, Marty? He's like, you know, sleeve tattoos and, like, metal. But I could just. I was. If I put a flannel shirt on this guy, he's gonna look right, you know, he's gonna look like somebody out of Honey. I Shrunk the Kids. And I was like, let's. I was like, can I just shoot that again with Marty? And again they were like, this is. Come on, Zach. But they let me. And I'm glad we did. Cause, you know, Marty, my boom op, was definitely the right dude for that.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, it's a great, very small break in an otherwise very, very exciting final stretch of the movie. You know, I notice you have another A credit on the score and. Yeah, yeah, I listened to the score yesterday while preparing for this. Like a Psycho. It's a very weird thing to just listen to standalone, not exactly the most melodic thing in the world, but it is, like, very, very involving and effective. And I thought maybe you could tell me a little bit about one, what you do in that process and what you were thinking with your collaborators.

[Zach Kreger]

So my collaborators are my two, like, childhood best friends, Ryan and Hayes Holiday. They're brothers. I've been in a band with them forever. Like, we're in a band in college and you. We got back together, and when they moved out to LA and we played a lot of music together. We share a musical mind, and they're wildly talented guys. They're way more talented than me. But what I know about those guys is that I can communicate psychically with them when I want. And so this process was. I kind of know what the music should be for every scene. And with them, I can just be like, dude could take that little hand thing that, you know, we all worship and, like, sprinkle in a little bit of this weird song that we've all heard before. It should be kind of like. And they can just do it. They can just, like, do what I want, what I have in my head. And so some of the songs. Some of the songs in there, I did write and perform myself, and. And some of the songs they wrote and performed all themselves. And then some of the songs are just kind of like all three of us just kind of like jamming together. And I'm very happy with it. You know, I think it's I think it's a. It's a cool score. It's what I wanted, you know. And so, yeah, and I'm gonna use those guys again and again. Cause I think they're just. They're so brilliant. And yeah, I got lucky.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's really effective. I've also had at least two people now say to me when we were talking about the movie, as soon as Beware of Darkness hit, I knew that I was gonna be. I was gonna love this. Like that There is like a tone set. There's only a handful of needle drops in the movie. But can you just talk about how you made those choices?

[Zach Kreger]

Well, as I was writing, I was listening to some music and Beware of Darkness came on when I was like in the writing process, you know. So I, you know, I vomit 70 pages out in LA that are a mess and then I go to my manager's house who lives in the woods in the east coast and I just am alone for about three weeks and I don't do anything but wake up, write, eat, write, sleep. That's it. So in that process, I was over there and I was listening to Beware of Darkness and I was like, this is was just like a bolt from the blue. I was like, there's no ambiguity. This is the song that will play in the opening montage. That song costs. I can't. I'm not going to tell you. But it hurt. It real. We that hurt to get that song in this movie, but I think it's worth it. And then we have Percy Sledge and we have a handsome family song. I really like the that. That handsome family song is like a song that has just been like really important to me for a long time. Yeah, I like that the music is melancholy in this. You know, I don't want the movie to be melancholy, but I like that there is like a blue undertone to everything. It feels right.

[Sean Fennessey]

Right? You're making a Resident Evil movie.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

How are you feeling about that?

[Zach Kreger]

Pretty, pretty pumped. It's going to be not at all like barbarian and weapons. It's going to be just a rock em sock em. It's for me to play. It's for me to turn my brain off and just make like a Evil Dead 2, like get crazy with the camera. Austin Abrams, who played James is going to be my guy. So it's just Austin is the movie I love. We had an amazing thing together and I think it's a weird, fun, just like wild story. And yeah, it's not doing any of this sifting and reinventing itself. It's like this movie follows a person from point A to point B. So it's weird in that way that it's just like a real time foot journey where you just go deeper and deeper into the depths of hell. And it's really like a love letter to the games because I love those games and the. And so it's kind of my kind of homage to them.

[Sean Fennessey]

Indulge me for one second on this. One of my favorite things about your first two movies is that they are exactly what I am looking for at the movies, which is original, intoxicating suspense with great performances and laughs and pretty much something that is indebted to a lot, but unlike anything I've ever seen before. That's my number.

[Zach Kreger]

Oh, my God. Well, that's the nicest thing I've heard in this process. It's true. Thank you very much.

[Sean Fennessey]

And it is something that I really care about and that I really dig. It's literally why I'm doing the show. Resident Evil is ip and we're in the IP era.

[Zach Kreger]

Sure. Okay, Fair. However.

[Sean Fennessey]

And balance that. Like, help me understand it.

[Zach Kreger]

Yeah, yeah. Resident Evil of ip. I've never seen a Resident Evil movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, wow.

[Zach Kreger]

I've never seen one. And I played the games obsessively. This is a story that comes from a healthy, creative place. This is a story that I would have wanted to write whether I got Resident Evil the IP or not. I just so happened to be able to, you know, to have these Resident Evil people be down, and so I get to play in their sandbox. And I'm honored to. And I'm stoked that I get to tell a story that I actually love. I don't need to do this. You know, I'm in a healthy enough place where I can go make a different original movie. And it's fine. I'm doing it because I think this movie is going to be. Be fucking awesome. And so, you know, I get that it's ip and I get that there's people who are gonna be like, why? And I hope that. My hope is that when you see Resident Evil, you'd be like, no, I get it, dude. That was awesome.

[Sean Fennessey]

You have my trust. I'm not questioning you. It is curious to me, though, because I think there is an urge for when someone emerges in the way that you have in the last few years, we're kind of like, keep going, keep pushing, keep forcing studios to keep making movies like weapons, you know?

[Zach Kreger]

And I tell you this, right after Resident Evil I mean, I'm working right now. I have a script that I was alluding to. It's a Sci Fi thing. It's my favorite thing. And I'm probably going to hit the ground running right after Resident Evil and go. Go get into that, you know? And so I'm definitely like, I have. I have more original things in me, you know, But I consider Resident Evil an original thing. And I think you'll. I think you will, too, when you see it. It's not, you know, so. Yeah, I don't know what else to say.

[Sean Fennessey]

You have my trust.

[Zach Kreger]

I'm just.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm not trying to give you a hard time. Just something that is.

[Zach Kreger]

I don't think.

[Sean Fennessey]

I know you're not going to.

[Zach Kreger]

I'm talking to you, but I'm also talking to.

[Sean Fennessey]

To the haters.

[Zach Kreger]

Imaginary hater.

[Sean Fennessey]

So, yeah, Zach, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. You're traveling, you're seeing, you're around the world. Any plane movies. What do you got?

[Zach Kreger]

Oh, man. I mean. And I've seen so much great stuff lately. Let me. Hang on. I want to give you such a good answer, but I'm worried that I'm going to just, like, blow this because I didn't think about this in advance. Oh, no. You know what? I really enjoyed the jaws 50 year anniversary. Jaws doc. I thought that was so fun. You know what I love, dude? I loved how vulnerable he was about being traumatized by that process and how he had to go and, like, cry for a while and, like, heal, and he's still. It's still a sore subject. And it just. I was so nerd, like, nourished by that because it's like, dude, I really went through the ringer making weapons. You know, there was. There. I had a collapse, honestly, near the end, I had to. I really did. Like, my body kind of failed on me. I was exhausted. We're doing six day weeks, double shifts. Me and Larkin were shooting with the crew, and then we'd wrap the crew and then shoot with second unit into the night. Six day weeks, dude. And at a certain point, I just kind of, like, I crashed, like, in a weird way that I've never crashed before. And it was hard. And I had really awful dreams about being on set for, like, almost a month after. And it was. It was gnarly. And to hear somebody have that and to know that, like, this guy had a truly miserable time making a movie, and yet he made arguably what many people would Call the greatest movie ever made, not the greatest film ever made to be, you know, but the greatest movie ever made. I'm not the first person to make that distinction, but, you know, it doesn't, you know, you can make something really wonderful and suffer all the way through, and, and, and you don't have to suffer all the way through. I don't think that's a prerequisite. But I was just really encouraged that, like, you know, the process is the process and the result is separate. And I think that's. That was just really cool to. To hear from a master.

[Sean Fennessey]

I really like that. You did remind me of one last thing I wanted to ask you about, because all the crazy physical media heads are like, when will I get the Barbarian 4K? They're really mad.

[Zach Kreger]

I joined their chorus and I have, I have. Have banged the drum and made phone calls and tried my best to get some sort of physical media, and I'm not making headway, and it kind of bums me out.

[Sean Fennessey]

I only ask because, you know, part of the relationship that we built with Jaws, obviously, was not just watching it at home, but like the special features and stuff in the documentaries and all the stuff that was attached to learning about the making of that movie, your movies. It would be fun to watch and learn and see the things that you did in your movies too. You know, there's a mythologizing that is kind of important when you get to a certain stage as a filmmaker.

[Zach Kreger]

I mean, I love watching the Making of sometimes as much as watching the movie. I bought the Panic Room DVD and I watched all three of them, and I think those things are amazing. I like the prep and the post and the whole deal. You know, I, I like watching David Fincher talk about how we're going to open a floor safe for 17 minutes. You know, it is like, to me, that's great. So I, I, you know, selfishly, I want people to watch me boss other people around and look cool.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know what?

[Zach Kreger]

I. First of all, we don't have any footage like that in Barbarian because nobody cared enough. But we did do special features. Those special features are available on the iTunes purchase. So there's a commentary and there's the featurette and stuff like that. But I hear you, man. I would love it to be physical.

[Sean Fennessey]

Zach, you're the best. Congrats on weapons. This is very exciting, man.

[Zach Kreger]

You're the best. Sean, you don't know how important it is to me to do this with you. It means a lot to me. I love your mind and I really love what you're doing so thanks for having me.

[Sean Fennessey]

The same goes 2x for me. Thanks man. Good luck with weapons dude.

[Zach Kreger]

Cheers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Thanks to Zach Kreger. Thank you to Brian Raftery. Please stay tuned on this feed for Mission Accomplished. It's an awesome show and I know if you love movies and stories about making of movies and how they fit into the culture at large here in this country and abroad, you will find that story fascinating. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. I wanted to send a special shout out to Sam Birdwhistle who's been helping us with research and guiding us through the 25 for 25 project this summer. He's been a great help. Thank you to Sam and we are taking a break as I said on the show for the next few weeks. I'm really excited to be taking a break. I'm probably going to have a slightly healthier relationship to watching movies and thinking about movies over that break break. I'm really fired up though to get back and get out to the fall festival season. I really want to have a really great fourth quarter on the show with Amanda and I'm pumped about a couple of the movies I've already seen that I can't talk about yet and a couple of the movies that I will be seeing in the fall. And it's going to be PTA September when we get back to man. So just don't forget great things ahead. Have a great summer. Thank you as always for listening and watching this show. It means a lot to us. We'll see you again soon.

[Chris Ryan]

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