Barbarian director Zach Cregger confirms he won’t be following up his debut project with a sequel, as he dissects his new film Weapons, which is set to terrify horror fans this week.
Cregger made his first foray into the horror genre just two years ago with the low-budget horror, Barbarian, starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long.
Made with less than $5million (£3.77m), the movie was a huge success, making $45.4m (£34.2m) at the box office and becoming a highly regarded film in the genre.
While promoting his latest film, the director chatted to Metro about his first project and his fears about following up with another horror.
‘I knew if Barbarian didn’t work, I’d never get to make another movie. So that was an intense amount of pressure. Weapons has pressure because it’s a bigger budget and there’s expectation, but it’s not more pressure than I had with Barbarian,’ Cregger confides in a Zoom call on a Tuesday evening in July.
‘Barbarian, I felt like, I’m fighting for my life here to get this movie made. Honestly, I was like, this is my one shot. I felt like, Eminem, you know,’ he said, referencing the song Lose Yourself from the rapper.
The film follows a woman who finds herself in a terrifying position when she arrives at her Airbnb to find another person already staying there. Things go from creepy to terrifying as she ends up investigating a hidden room in the basement and discovers an inbred creature who has been attacking guests and keeping them as pets to mother.
I ask the director if people have told him that he’s ruined Airbnb’s for them since his film came out.
‘Yeah, and I love that,’ he says with a laugh.
But the real question is, has he used an Airbnb since releasing the film?
‘No!’
While the film was disturbing in all the best ways, Cregger admits that there’s a pretty obvious reason that he doesn’t want to expand that world with a prequel or sequel.
‘I don’t have a Barbarian 2 in me, because that, honestly, who wants to watch a movie about like a rape dungeon?
‘I don’t. It’s not, it’s not the subject matter that I’m really interested in. I think what’s cool about Barbarian is the way that story unfolds, you know?
‘But I don’t, I don’t have another thing to say about that, you know, it’s done.’
Fortunately, he is keen to explore other projects like his new film Weapons starring Josh Brolin, Julie Garner, and Alden Ehrenreich.
The movie focuses on a group on a classroom of children who suddenly disappear, fleeing their beds at 2:17am one night, never to be seen again. The ramifications of their disappearance are explored in the two-hour-long film that shows how the town of Maybrook deals with this loss.
The film is littered with horror references, and Cregger admits that Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining was an accidental influence.
‘The Shining is definitely present in this movie. I’m obsessed with Stanley Kubrick’s movie, and so, you know, that’s in there for sure, but not on purpose.
‘You know, 2:17, I wasn’t thinking about it when I wrote 2:17, but in Stephen King’s novel, you know, it happens in room 217 in The Shining.’
The director seems cool and collected on our chat, but admitted that while filming every project, he has felt a constant sense of panic.
‘I think that’s just the process, I talked to a director yesterday who’s kind of a household name, and has made a ton of movies, and I was venting to him, and he was like, “That’s just every movie,”‘ he said.
‘So I have to, I just have to accept that, you know, a sustained panic attack is, is my job.’
Weapons is a thrilling ride that keeps you baffled but gripped until the final scenes, but Cregger says the original ending had to be scrapped.
‘In my very first cut of the movie, I didn’t have any voice-over at the end. It just ended on a shot of that little kid’s eyes and and so, you know, I show it to the very first audience, and, you know, the movie ends, and the credits begin, and this woman in the test room goes, “What the f**k?”
‘And I knew I had a problem. So I added that, that little narration there at the end, and it seems to really, you know, soothe a lot of the frustration. So I’m glad it’s in.’
Like in any good horror, there are a lot of gruesome deaths in the films, with people getting knocked off in truly creative ways.
The director says there’s just one death he’s not yet managed to commit to screen.
‘I’m always trying to riff on…my favourite piece of movie violence ever is in the French film Irréversible, with the fire extinguisher caving somebody’s head in.
‘And it’s just amazing. So in Barbarian, I kind of tried to do it, and I didn’t quite get it. And then I tried it again in Weapons, and I didn’t quite get it, so I’m gonna, I’ll try it again in another movie someday.
‘But I have yet to kind of nail that. I’m closing in on it, but I’m not there yet.’
Weapons is out in cinemas August 8.
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