We Don’t Talk About Weapons: The Anti-Word-of-Mouth Campaign Behind Summer’s Scariest Movie

Weapons is holding its secrets closer than any other summer movie has, even plot-sensitive IP behemoths like Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps. With those, moviegoers at least knew what they were getting. But what is Weapons, exactly? The enigmatic title alone has confounded people. The plot that’s been revealed so far in trailers comes down to a question: Why did 17 children in a small town disappear into the darkness, never to return?

“Look, I feel like we have a pretty sticky premise with this movie. You can wrap your head around it instantly: all these kids from one class go running out in the middle of the night. Why? Clean question,” says director Zach Cregger, clapping his hands together. “Not a lot of confusion there.”

But the premise raises countless other questions. Is Weapons a supernatural story? A straightforward kidnapping thriller? Are the kids dead—or is there hope of finding them again? Producer New Line Cinema and Cregger are hoping this uncertainty will preoccupy potential ticket buyers. While other movies are sharing as much as possible in an attempt to win a small piece of the ever shrinking attention economy, Weapons wants to become a phenomenon by playing keep-away.

“Our mission for the marketing was: lean into the question, lean away from the answer,” Cregger says. That’s not always the case with studios and their corporate parent companies, which tend to prefer sure things over question marks. “Luckily, everybody at Warner Bros. was totally down. It wasn’t like we had a big tug-of-war. We didn’t ever lock horns and freak out about what was too much.”

It’s a lesson Cregger learned after making the 2022 horror hit Barbarian, which earned $45 million worldwide against a tiny $4.5 million budget. That film, too, was an original concept that succeeded by preserving its central mysteries. “I think everybody was totally inclined to just, ‘Let’s do it again,’” Cregger says. That puts it in line with thrillers of yesteryear, like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and The Sixth Sense, which also benefited greatly from the element of surprise.

What does the title of Weapons mean? Even those who’ve seen the movie aren’t sure, which is just how Cregger wants it. “I always like a title that’s opaque. I think it invites you to consider the movie one layer deeper, and to try and make sense of it,” he says. “I’ve heard a couple of people articulate why [it’s called that], and I think they’re all right. I think it’s all legal. I probably called it Weapons when I first hit ‘save’ when I started, and I just never really second-guessed it.”

What people can know about the story: Julia Garner plays a teacher who faces suspicion because the missing children are all in her class. Josh Brolin is the irate father of one of the lost boys. Benedict Wong is a school administrator, and Alden Ehrenreich is a local cop.

As with his previous film, Cregger hopes the promise of surprise will drive more people to the theater. “And Barbarian didn’t have as clean of a launching point as Weapons does,” he says. “Two people checking into a double-booked Airbnb is fine, but I feel like the question of Weapons is a bit more, I don’t know—it’s a better hook.”

The only obstacle now is loose-lipped preview audiences. It’s ironic: Cregger was once a member of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know, playing Abe Lincoln in a sketch that sees the 16th US president killed because he keeps disrupting the play at Ford’s Theatre by talking too much. (“Now you fucked up! Now you fucked up!” he bellows from the balcony after John Wilkes Booth tries to politely shush him.)

Cregger has a Lincoln skull tattoo on his right arm, a tribute to his comedy days. It’s next to an image of a bloody red hand, which symbolizes his turn to horror.

As of now, there isn’t much at the multiplex that even the most gossipy moviegoers could ruin. Superman, Fantastic Four, and Jurassic World Rebirth may be crowd-pleasers, but they aren’t especially heavy with twists or surprises. It’s easy to guess who wins the big race in Brad Pitt’s F1. How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch are faithful, live-action remakes of animated classics everyone already knows by heart. In a season of cinematic comfort food, Weapons is the only studio release that aims to starve moviegoers of information.

Not that there haven’t been close calls. Preview footage shown in April at the Las Vegas–

held CinemaCon, the annual convention for theater owners, included a shot of Amy Madigan, a performer whose involvement in the story isn’t revealed until at least the film’s midway point. That led to some mistaken press coverage: “Weapons CinemaCon Footage Features Creepy Clowns,” read a headline in Screen Rant.

In fact, there are zero clowns in Weapons. But Madigan does play someone with an extremely unusual appearance. (More on who and what that is in part two of this Cregger conversation.)

Zach Cregger directs Julia Garner in a classroom scene from Weapons.

Quantrell Colbert/Warner Bros.

“Yeah,” Cregger says ruefully. “We showed a shot at CinemaCon that she was featured in, and I didn’t like it. I liked the shot; I didn’t like it being out for public consumption.” From that point forward, the character in question stayed under wraps. Then Cregger and the marketing team decided to put split-second glimpses of Madigan’s alarming-looking woman—seen at one point with huge glasses and smeared lipstick—in the official trailer.

They go by so fast that it’s a challenge to even get screenshots. But even that choice sparked more questions. “Idk wtf is going on with this lady but can’t wait,” wrote one Reddit user who managed to capture images.

Cregger began writing Weapons without a plan. “That’s my rule for myself. If I start getting too thoughtful, I tend to write something boring. My whole philosophy is to try and eliminate me from the process. Turn my brain completely off and let my subconscious take over, and just be a conduit,” he says. “I’m a huge admirer of David Lynch and his process.”

Cregger was also inspired by a real-life tragedy: the death of his friend Trevor Moore, a colleague in The Whitest Kids U’ Know. (He played John Wilkes Booth in the Lincoln sketch.) Moore died from injuries after an accidental fall from a balcony in 2021, while Cregger was editing Barbarian. “I was very wrapped up in that, and it was just an absolutely devastating event,” he says. “Rather than totally self-destruct—I can’t drink and do drugs anymore—my only way to engage with these really intense feelings is through creativity.”

That’s when he started typing, and Weapons emerged—another story in which the answers don’t come easily. “I get to write these characters that are feeling kind of what I’m feeling,” he says. “Something precious is gone, and everyone is left to just deal with it. That was the jumping-off point.”

The movie has an explanation, but real life does not. “And it’s funny​​—it’s not like making this movie fixed my grief or anything like that at all,” Cregger says. “But it did allow me to engage with it in a constructive way, and not a destructive way.”

There’s much more to say about the inspiration for, and resolution of, Weapons—but it’ll have to wait until after the movie’s debut.