Inside “Weapons”: Zach Cregger on Atlanta Crews, Practical Effects, and That Haunting Opening

Weapons became one of the year’s most acclaimed box office hits, and while the film’s success was certainly by design, it still surprised writer/director Zach Cregger. Cregger knows how to craft a movie that gets under your skin—his last film, Barbarian, was one of 2022’s most unsettling and surprising films, not even he could have predicted that Weapons would become a pop culture phenomenon.

The story Cregger presents in his new film is deceptively simple;