Weapons creator Zach Cregger says Dune director’s hit thriller Prisoners starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman served as a huge inspiration for the horror movie

Zach Cregger and Julia Garner behind the scenes in Weapons — (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

New hit horror movie Weapons is visually striking to say the least, and that’s no surprise as director Zach Cregger has now confirmed that the visual aspect was greatly inspired by Denis Villeneuve’s hit thriller Prisoners.

“The cinematography of Prisoners is so gorgeous. It's like washed-out, somber, cloudy, rainy movie," said Cregger in an interview with Letterboxd, when asked about his watchlist of inspirations for Weapons. "And I really, really wanted to, like, evoke everything visually that that movie evoked. And it's very lived in too... The mess in the people's homes and all that stuff. It's great."

Directed by Villeneuve, Prisoners follows the disappearance of two young girls in a small, rainy town, starring Hugh Jackman as a desperate father. As Cregger described, the 2013 film is extremely bleak and grey-looking, almost as if the weather is mimicking the emotions of the two despairing families. However, we can also see similarities between the two movies’ villains and why they were both able to go unnoticed for a period of time.

But that’s not all, as Cregger said a bunch of other films lent a helping hand during the making of Weapons. When it comes to the intertwining storylines and Alden Ehrenreich's police officer character Paul, Cregger says he looked to Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 movie Magnolia. "Magnolia, masterpiece, epic. All these different characters interacting, spiralling around one weird central miracle. I love it," said Cregger. "I kind of fashioned Alden after John C. Reilly."

Another movie that served as inspiration is '70s Australian mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock. "It's about bizarre behaviour of children and a disappearance, and you're left to just grapple with why. And it's really, it's an upsetting movie," said Cregger. "It's hard for me not to think about that movie when I think about this movie."

And, of course, one movie that we all probably saw in Weapons is Stanley Kubrick’s Stephen King adaptation, The Shining. "I lift directly from The Shining in this movie. I'm not even ashamed. I mean, it's obvious," said Cregger. "It's the first movie that made me fall deeply in love with horror… that scene with the twins in the hallway, it just annihilated me. And I have been hunting that feeling ever since."

Weapons is out in theaters now. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies, or our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.

I'm the Junior Social Media Editor here at GamesRadar+, handling all of Total Film's social platforms. However, I also write, covering all things film and TV for the site's entertainment section. I joined GamesRadar+ in 2023 and have been here ever since. I previously worked in communications after graduating with an MA in journalism. In my spare time, you can find me binging horror movies or getting lost in a cosy little game on my Switch.

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