Zach Cregger

4.0 Miss March (2009)

7.0 Barbarian (2022)

6.8 Weapons (2025)

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Zach Cregger (USA, 1981), originally a comedian who starred in several TV sitcoms, debuted as a filmmaker with the mediocre farce Miss March (2009). Many years later he directed the horror movie Barbarian (2022).

Weapons (2025) is another horror movie which additionally twisted the timeline a` la Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. The film works well until the ending, which is somewhat unsatisfactory.

A child narrator that we don't see informs us of the mysterious disappearance of 17 children. They all left their homes in the middle of the night, at exactly 2:17, triggering alarms and security cameras. We then see their teacher, Justine, go to class and find only one of her 18 students: Alex. The town is a small provincial town of ordinary middle-class families. At a school meeting, the parents suspect Justine. She lives alone in a big house. Someone knocks at her door and disappears. She finds that he has painted "witch" on her car. Justine gets drunk and has sex with her ex-boyfriend, police officer Paul, whose wife Donna is out of town. Justine thinks that Alex is the key to the secret. (Somehow the rest of the community doesn't think of inquiring why Alex was the only child not to disappear). Her boss, the school's principal Marcus, warns her not to talk to Alex who is still traumatized. Justine checks Alex's house and sees through the windows that Alex's parents are sitting on a couch, apparently staring but not moving. At the supermarket Justine is attacked by a woman: it's Donna, who somehow knows that Justine slept with her husband Paul. Justine has a nightmare and decides to confront Alex but he runs away from her. She knocks at the door of his house but nobody answers. Justine stays in her car waiting for someone to come out of the house, but falls asleep. In the middle of the night someone comes out of the house, enters her car and cuts a lock of her hair without hurting her and without even waking her up.
Archer, the parent of one of the children, pressures the sheriff, who reassures him that they have mobilized everybody. Archer is not convinced (neither are we: there is no evidence in town of a frantic search for the missing children). We see that Archer spies on Justine and is carrying two containers of paint in his truck: he is the one who painted "Witch" on her car. He suspects her. Archer reviews the video recording of his own child Matthew leaving the house at 2:17am. Matthew ran out in a specific direction, as if having a specific destination. Archer asks another parent to share his recording and then plots the direction that this second child took. Back home, Archer draws the two lines on a map of the town and finds that they converge on a specific house. Archer runs into Justine at a gas station and confronts her with his suspicions. Just then, our of the blue, Justine's boss Marcus runs towards Justine and jumps on her. Archer defends Justine, who looks for shelter inside the gas station.
The cop Paul is driving around when he sees a homeless drug addict, James, trying to break into a building. Paul chases him and eventually stops him, but in the process of searching James' pocket Paul is stung by a needle. Paul is terrified that James could have AIDS and beats James unconscious, an act that his car's camera recorded and for which he could lose his job. Paul revives James and offers him a deal: Paul will let him go if James promises never to return to the town. We realize this is a flashback because next he is meeting up with Justine and having wild sex with her. Then he walked home and found his wife Donna, who had returned earlier from her trip, and confessed to her, which explains why Donna attacked Justine. Paul returns to his police station and sees James walking towards it. Paul disengages the camera of his car and chases James.
We now see James, who lives in a tent outside town where he does drugs. In the morning he walks around town checking all the cars parked in the street until he finds one that is unlocked and steals its contents. He tries to sell them to a pawn shop but the shop is not interested. Desperate, James tries to break into a building. Now we realize it's another flashback: this is when Paul sees him the first time and chases him. We see Paul reviving him after beating him up. James walks away. It starts raining. James breaks into Alex's house that seems to be abandoned. As he searches for valuables, he discovers the 17 missing children locked in the basement: they never speak nor move. James, scared, rushes out of the house after he sees the two parents get up from the couch. Later, James realizes that he could get the reward offered by the town for information about the children, so he calls the police station asking for the reward. The cops tell him to report to the police station and that's when Paul sees him the second time. Paul, furious that James broke his promise never to return, chases him again. James flees to his tent in the woods. James has the vision of a ghost and locks himself inside the tent. When someone tries to open the tent, James panics and sticks needle into his face: it's Paul. Paul is now even more terrified that James could have AIDS. James tells him of the children and convinces Paul to drive to Alex's house. Paul leaves James handcuffed and locked inside the police car and walks into the house alone. James waits in vain in the car. At night, Paul finally walks out of the house and runs like a maniac towards his car. He opens the door and drags James into the house.
Justine tells her principal Marcus that Alex may be abused by his parents and so Marcus summons Alex's parents to the school. Instead of Alex's parents, Alex's eccentric aunt Gladys shows up at Marcus' office, claiming that the parents are sick and cannot leave the house. Marcus insists that he needs to talk to them in person. Marcus is a gay who lives with his lover Terry. Gladys visits them pretending to be thirsty, and, out of the blue, pulls out scissors and cuts lock of hair from Terry's head. She wraps the hair around a stick and breaks the stick, causing Marcus to become a homicidal maniac and brutally murder his lover Terry. She stops him by dropping the stick into a bowl of water. She then wraps Justine's hair around the stick and Marcus rushes out like a beast looking for Justine. And so we realize that this is another flashback showing us why Marcus ran to the gas station and attacked Justine in front of Archer. We see Archer defending Justine from the maniacally frenzied Marcus who frees himself from Archer and runs inside the gas station, chasing Justine (while the gas station attendant looks without helping). Archer manages to stop Marcus and Justine can jump into her car and drive away. Nonetheless, Marcus starts running after her car like a mad dog. Archer gets into his own car and starts chasing Marcus but Marcus is run over by a car and killed. Justine is grateful to Archer for saving her life, and Archer begins to see her as a helpless woman not as a suspect. Archer shows her his map of the town, and Justine realizes that the point where all lines converge is Alex's house: the 17 children all started running towards Alex's house at 2:17am. Archer and Justine drive to the house. (Missing from the story is what the cops do about Marcus' strange behavior).
Another flahback shows Alex's parents preparing for the surprise visit of aunt Gladys. When Gladys arrives, she performs some witchy act on the parents who turn catatonic. Alex tries in vain to revive them. Gladys threatens Alex to kill them if he tells anyone, and proves her power by having each of them stick forks in his and her own face. Gladys tell Alex that she is very sick and that she hopes that children will heal her. Gladys orders Alex to steal an object from each of his 17 classmates and then at 2:17 she performs magic to summon all of them to the house. Gladys locked them in the basement and Alex was in charge of feeding both his parents and the 17 classmates.
Back to the present, Archer and Justine walk into Alex's house. The zombiefied Paul and James attack them. Paul attacks Justine and James attacks Archer. Justine kills Paul with his own gun and then shoots James as he is about to kill Archer. Now Justine has saved Archer's life. Archer finds the children in the basement, but they are unresponsive. Gladys tells Alex not to cross a line of salt. Alex does it and causes his own parents to chase him around the house trying to kill him. Gladys bewitches Archer who now attacks Justine. Alex finds Gladys' magic stick, breaks it and unleashes the children. The children storm out of the basement and chase Gladys outside the house until they surround her and tear her body apart. Then the whole spell ends. Archer stops trying to kill Justine and tends to his child. Alex's parents stop chasing him but they are still catatonic. So are the 17 rescued children.