Filming under code names. Using draconian software to distribute scripts. Holding a press junket where, for the most part, the cast can’t say anything.
Welcome to Zach Cregger’s Weapons, the most secretive movie of the year so far, and by design, one of the hardest to describe. The Barbarian director’s highly anticipated follow-up is a multiperspective horror epic that reinvents itself almost every 20 minutes. The less you know going in, the better.
I saw the movie, which is in theaters on Friday. Here’s what I’m allowed to tell you: At 2:17 a.m., all but one child from the same class runs out of their homes and vanishes. A community is left questioning who — or what — is behind their disappearance.
“With Avengers, if you say anything, you’re going to prison for 20 years or something. You just cut everything off in your brain,” Weapons star Josh Brolin tells Yahoo. He knows a thing or two about Marvel rules, having played supervillain Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Weapons, he says the secrecy felt different than other projects he’s done. This one is rooted in creative protection rather than corporate enforcement. “It’s more of an old-school PR thing where they’re just not telling anybody anything.”
So far, it’s working. As of Thursday, Weapons sits at a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest-rated horror movie of the decade.
“It seems like the story is its own character,” Brolin says. “They’re not revealing a lot. I think it’s super smart.”
But behind all the mystique lies something far more intensely personal — a film rooted in mortality and one filmmaker’s need to make sense of an unexpected loss.
The grief beneath the horror
Cregger began writing the script after one of his best friends suddenly died, an experience that shaped not just the tone of the film, but its entire structure.
“The only silver lining from that terrible, dark cloud was that I was able to write from a place of urgency and not from ambition,” he tells Yahoo. “The idea of these children leaving and this community left to grapple with how to feel about it — that phantom limb you get when you lose someone — it just felt very pressing.”
The director says he was able to inject himself into all of the film’s characters who were experiencing the aftermath of the sudden disappearances.
“All the characters that this movie examines are some aspect of me dealing with the same thing,” he says.
Star Julia Garner says that raw feeling is part of what drew her to the script.
“The story is so personal to [Cregger] — you can tell,” she tells Yahoo. “I think that’s why it’s so beautiful, and I think that’s why it will resonate with people. I mean, yes, is it a horror film? Sure. But I think it’s also about people and loss and losing control over something.”
Zach Cregger talks to Yahoo about his secretive film Weapons. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News)
Though Cregger is quick to tell me he’s “so over horror movies that are a meditation on grief and trauma,” Weapons still carries the quiet weight of heartache. Audiences likely won’t pick up on it.
“Most people who watch this movie are not really going to know that that’s where it comes from. And that’s good. It should be a fun movie,” he says sincerely. “But for me, just as a way of writing, it came from a real place.”
Not every mystery in Weapons has a deeper meaning, though. The 2:17 a.m. time stamp at the center of the plot? “I wish I had a great answer,” Cregger says with a laugh. “I don’t. It just had to be some time.”
Guarding the mystery
When it was time to make the film, Cregger took extreme measures to make sure the story stayed under wraps.
“If you know where it’s going, then a crucial aspect of this thing evaporates,” he says. “I want people to go on the ride and to be surprised. A thriller should surprise you.”
To protect that ride, Cregger used a software called Embershot — “a really hardcore, draconian kind of secret software,” he says — to distribute the script to select studios and actors.
“You have to do this triple authentication. You can only read it on the app online. I could watch and know what page you’re on as you’re reading it, which is a little messed up,” he says. “I didn’t do that ever … but I could if I wanted to!”
The script couldn’t be shared, downloaded or screenshotted and would disappear the moment Cregger decided it should. Filming also took place under an alias. “Maybe it was overboard,” he says. “But I think ultimately, it’s important to preserve the mystery.”
Garner appreciated the tight-lipped environment, even if it meant she couldn’t share what she was filming. “I don’t love when people talk about things before [they come] out,” she says. “It was definitely hard because I couldn’t — I didn’t want to even talk about it too much [to friends]. I had to be very cryptic in how I was describing everything.” Keeping the plot under wraps was worth it. “I’ve never read anything like it, and it’s so unique that I would just want the audience to see the film,” Garner says. “You can’t really describe it.”
From Pedro Pascal to Brolin
While Weapons was being guarded from outside eyes, it was quietly transforming behind the scenes. Before production began, the film looked very different — at least on paper.
“The original movie, the first person I ever cast was Pedro Pascal,” Cregger reveals. “I built a whole cast around [him].”
But when the actors and writers’ strikes shut down production in 2023, everything changed. “Schedules got messed up. I ended up having to recast the entire movie. So the movie now is like unrecognizable from what it was a year before when I was ready to go.”
Brolin replaced Pascal to play the dad of one of the 17 missing kids. It turned out to be a blessing. “I love Pedro. He’s wonderful,” Cregger says. “But the movie gods smiled on me. Now, I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I love every single person I’ve got.”
Brolin, who initially passed on Weapons when he first read the script, said a conversation with Cregger changed his mind about the movie. Specifically, when the director opened up about losing his friend.
“That’s what brought me in,” Brolin says. “That conversation — we both had tears in our eyes when he was over at my house. It’s rare. And you want to work with that.”
Brolin says his 40 years in the industry have made him dubious of some new directors.
“I had my questions — not because I’m in a better place or anything like that — I’m just naturally a skeptic. Is somebody really going to work hard? I’ve seen [directors] get jobs like this, and then they’re off doing their thing. They’re not watching movies and they’re not obsessing about it,” he continues. “Zach’s an obsessive. He’s coming from this really emotional place. I want to be directed by somebody where it’s that personal. I don’t want to be with somebody where it’s just a job for them.”
That same grief-fueled urgency that sparked Weapons is what drives the film from the inside. For Cregger, secrecy isn’t just about hiding plot twists — it’s about safeguarding the beating heart of the story until audiences can experience it exactly as he intended: unspoiled, unprepared and fully in its grip.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
