Director Zach Cregger breathed new life into horror with the darkly comedic — and terrifying — Barbarian. The 2022 phenomenon weaponized the idea of a creepy Airbnb and all its dark corners, and now all eyes are on the writer-director as he makes his next move. Sony recently chose Cregger to helm a reboot of the Resident Evil franchise, but that project is still a few years from fruition. In the meantime, Cregger has a new original project that could be just as terrifying as Barbarian.
This year, Cregger is reteaming with Warner Bros. for Weapons. The director’s next film will remix another classic horror trope: creepy (and potentially possessed) little kids. Check out the first trailer below.
Weapons sounds every bit like a terrifying urban legend you’d hear from another kid during recess. The story begins on a Wednesday morning in the town of Maybrook, which should have been “a normal day” at the local elementary school. But something is amiss in Mrs. Grandy’s (Julia Garner) classroom: her students are nowhere to be found. As we learn from the trailer’s young narrator, all of Grandy’s students woke up in the middle of the night and left their homes, never to be seen again.
Their disappearance naturally kickstarts a conspiracy theory that swallows the town. Grandy becomes a pariah, and soon after losing her job, she’s haunted by some kind of presence in her home. Meanwhile, the parents of the missing children (one played by Josh Brolin) try in vain to solve the case. It’s clear Maybrook is caught in the crosshairs of a malevolent supernatural entity, as the rest of the trailer features spontaneous combustion, flashes of inexplicable bloodshed, and our missing kids Naruto running in the night.
Given Cregger’s taste for mystery, there’s no telling what Weapons has up its sleeve, but we can definitely expect another terrifying and wild ride when it hits theaters this summer.
