Zach Cregger’s Weapons has debuted with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, marking an incredible follow-up for the acclaimed horror director. This excellent Rotten Tomatoes performance for Weapons comes as somewhat of a surprise following the divisive reception of Cregger’s previous movie, Barbarian – but still a very welcome one.

Weapons centers around a group of children who all disappear in the middle of the night under mysterious circumstances, leaving their small town with an unsolvable mystery and only one person to blame: their school teacher. There are so many interesting theories about what might be going on in Weapons, but one thing is for sure – it won’t be anything that audiences are expecting.

The movie is a wholly original story from Cregger’s mind, but it still invites comparisons to many other movies. With anticipation rising for the horror movie after its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score debut, there are a handful of films that you could watch beforehand that will help set the stage for its arrival.

10

Magnolia (1999)

Directed By Paul Thomas Anderson

While there aren’t too many similarities between the stories of Magnolia and Weapons on the surface, early reactions to Zach Cregger’s new horror have frequently compared the two projects thanks to their unique tones and scattered storytelling devices. Both films create a very strange and unsettling atmosphere that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats before disrupting everything with a very unpredictable final act.

Magnolia centers around multiple eccentric characters searching for peace and happiness in the San Fernando Valley, whose lives become intertwined in almost imperceptible ways. Anderson’s film is a portrait of life at its most fleeting and unobtrusive, with characters that feel deeply personal and well-developed. The parallels between Magnolia and Weapons are no accident.

Cregger previously told Entertainment Weekly that Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie was a major inspiration for the bold swings he takes in the new film. He said, “I just like that kind of unapologetic, ‘This is an epic.’ I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that.”

9

The Empty Man (2020)

Directed By David Prior

Certainly a more traditional companion piece to Weapons, The Empty Man tells the story of a retired police officer who sets out to find a missing young girl and discovers a much more dangerous conspiracy in the process. It has the unsolvable mystery of Weapons and the sharp jump scares of other movies within the horror genre, which is the perfect combination.

Much like Weapons seems to do, The Empty Man blends the comforting realism of the detective genre with a more disturbing, twisted sense of the supernatural to create a very unique and unnerving atmosphere throughout. This has become a very popular subgenre of horror over the past few years, and Zach Cregger is clearly capitalizing on it with Weapons.

8

Prisoners (2013)

Directed By Denis Villeneuve

One of the most intriguing aspects of Weapons is just how mysterious and unpredictable it seems to be, with the movie’s trailers setting up a very complex mystery that audiences will struggle to guess the answer to right away. This is also something that Denis Villeneuve achieves with Prisoners, a similarly dark and gritty thriller about a man searching for his missing daughter.

Besides the key themes of missing children and police investigation, both Weapons and Prisoners seem to have very similar aesthetics of grungy, small-town crimes that really get under the audience’s skin. Denis Villeneuve has made several great movies, but Prisoners is the one whose suffocating atmosphere seems the most familiar to Weapons.

7

Apartment 7A (2024)

Directed By Natalie Erika James

Julia Garner is no stranger to the horror genre, having appeared in projects such as Weapons and Wolf Man this year alone – but last year housed one of the actress’s most underrated projects to date. Apartment 7A is a chilling supernatural horror that follows a young woman who moves in with an older couple and soon realizes their apartment houses a dark evil.

What makes Apartment 7A such an effective piece of horror is that it begins as a straightforward drama (albeit with a very uncomfortable atmosphere), and methodically evolves into something more frightening and paranormal. If the early reactions to Weapons are to be believed, this is a clear storytelling trait that the two projects have in common.

6

Infinity Pool (2023)

Directed By Brandon Cronenberg

Although Infinity Pool is technically more of a sci-fi than an all-out horror, the film uses its disturbing premise to get under the audience’s skin in a very similar way to how Weapons intends to do the same. The first act is a lot of setup, but if audiences let themselves get lost in the core mysteries, both of these projects could have very shocking conclusions that take routes nobody could have predicted.

Infinity Pool is a story of clones, secret idenтιтies, and cultish conspiracies that lures the audience in with a fairly simple concept and continues upping the stakes until the tension between these characters is almost too much to bear. The story, at least on the surface, follows a mundane couple who are roped into a suspicious scheme that offers to relieve them of death.

5

The Black Phone (2022)

Directed By Scott Derrickson

Despite all the dark mystery and eerie misdirection, at its core, Weapons offers a very familiar blueprint for horror movies: missing children in a small town. It’s a universally frightening concept, and it’s something that’s also explored very effectively in Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone. The movie stars Ethan Hawke as a mysterious serial kidnapper who traps his victims in a basement that holds nothing but a black phone.

While The Black Phone reads more like a thriller on the surface, Derrickson includes lots of horror-inspired filmmaking in his movie to gradually reveal the even darker aspects of his crime story. Weapons seems to adopt a very similar approach, using its core story of missing children to explore more horrific themes that aren’t evident from the trailers.

4

It Follows (2014)

Directed By David Robert Mitchell

It Follows has become somewhat of a cult classic within this particular subgenre over the past decades, with audiences constantly praising its elevated writing and allegorical storytelling for being ahead of its time. Much like Weapons‘ intent, the ending of It Follows takes some mᴀssive swings that won’t pay off for everybody, but the ambition is certainly something to behold.

Mitchell’s film centers around a young woman who believes that she’s been cursed following a strange Sєxual encounter with her new boyfriend – just to find that she’s the latest link in an ongoing supernatural chain. It’s a very eerie, atmospheric story that strongly rewards multiple viewings with its detailed storytelling and multiple interpretations.

3

Cuckoo (2024)

Directed By Tilman Singer

A fairly recent addition to this particular mystery/horror subgenre, Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo tells the story of a teenage girl who moves from America to live with her family in the German Alps. But when she begins working at her father’s prestigious holiday resort, she quickly realizes that something more nefarious is at play.

Singer’s film really keeps the audience on their toes with dark imagery and atmospheric set pieces throughout the first half, before plunging them into a twisted and disturbing conclusion that slams its foot on the gas, similar to what Cregger is seemingly going to do with Weapons. Cuckoo also features an excellent lead performance from Hunter Schafer, in only her second-ever feature-length role.

2

Us (2019)

Directed By Jordan Peele

The comparisons between Weapons and Jordan Peele’s filmography shouldn’t be too surprising, given how much Peele reportedly wanted to direct Weapons himself, but there’s no denying how stylistically and formally similar Cregger’s movie seems to be to Us. The director will certainly put his own spin on things, but the stories are cut from the same cloth.

Us follows an innocent family who find themselves the victims of an orchestrated break-in during their vacation, only to discover that the attackers look identical to themselves. The film is a gripping mystery about duality, idenтιтy, and personhood, told through the lens of a terrifying psychological horror.

1

Barbarian (2022)

Directed By Zach Cregger

It’s been three years since Zach Cregger broke into the horror scene with Barbarian, and his debut feature remains one of the most exciting and subversive horror movies of the 2020s so far. The story follows two young adults who decide to stay in the same holiday rental after they’re accidentally double-booked, but they soon discover a much more dangerous problem lurking in the basement.

What makes Barbarian such an exciting piece of original horror is that it never lets the audience know exactly what it wants to be; there’s brutal violence, psychological horror, and even elements of romance and dark comedy that give the film a totally unique atmosphere. There’s truly nothing quite like Barbarian, and Weapons seems like a very interesting and unexpected next step for Cregger.