This Tom Cruise-Starring, Oscar-Nominated Film Inspired Zach Cregger To Make ‘Weapons’

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Weapons’Zach Cregger‘s Weapons, the follow-up to his 2022 breakout horror hit, Barbarian, is finally hitting theaters, and audiences are going to note many interesting influences, despite its premise of 17 elementary school kids running off into the night being quite original. Some of the more obvious inspirations include Night of the Living Dead, but while doing the movie’s press tour, Cregger has repeatedly mentioned the huge influence Paul Thomas Anderson‘s 1999 Magnolia had on him as he was makingWeapons. Although that might seem like a strange declaration, the way Weapons is structured and the way certain characters are introduced immediately hark back to PTA’s ensemble character drama.

Where Do Those ‘Magnolia’ Influences Begin?

It’s not surprising that Cregger might have taken inspiration from one of Anderson’s more beloved classics, which follows a group of L.A. inhabitants as their lives interact in bizarre ways. Weapons takes place in the small suburban town of Maybrook, where the disappearance of 17 children, literally running out of their homes in the middle of the night, leads to upset parents and suspicions that their teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), may be responsible. While speaking with Entertainment Weeklyseveral months back, Cregger said that just the very nature of what Anderson did in Magnolia gave him the courage to start writing Weapons.

I just like that kind of unapologetic, ‘This is an epic.’ I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that.

Furthermore, while appearing on the Next Best Picture podcast, Cregger said how Anderson’s filmmaking techniques on Magnolia heavily inspired the opening sequence where we first learn about those missing kids.

Magnolia was a big inspiration for this movie. And the cold open of Magnolia is another montage with really energetic camera moves and zooms on a dolly, and all kinds of swinging, and it’s just never stationary. And so, my cinematographer, Larkin Seiple, and I talked about Magnolia all the time while we were putting that sequence together. And so it was very much an homage to that.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg on how Cregger used Magnolia as a blueprint to tell a very different type of horror movie.

Although Garner’s Justine is the first character we follow, to see how she’s mistreated by the people of the town when 17 of her students run off into the night, the movie doesn’t just stay with her, as might normally be the case. We then spend a good deal of time with Josh Brolin’s Archer, whose son was one of the missing kids, so he takes it upon himself to investigate. Much like Magnolia, the movie jumps between different characters, but unlike Magnolia, they each get their own distinct chapters before showing up in others. There’s also a non-linear aspect to the storytelling in Weapons where we see later events repeated, which was not something that Anderson did.

How Far Does Cregger Go in Taking Inspiration from ‘Magnolia’?

As you watch Weapons, several characters might remind you of those in Magnolia, to the point where you’ll wonder whether the actors were advised by Cregger to model their characters after ones from Anderson’s film. The most obvious one is Alden Ehrenreich‘s police officer Paul, who has an affair with Garner’s Virginia, but becomes more engaged with a homeless junkie, named James (played by Austin Abrams). Paul not only looks like John C. Reilly‘s police officer in Magnolia, but he also acts a lot like him, particularly in the way his attempts to arrest James go awry. Similarly, the young boy, Alex Lilly, played by Cary Christopher, may be viewed in a similar way as Jeremy Blackman’s young game show genius in Magnolia. His story is quite different, but his demeanor in the face of what is happening is an easy comparison.

Even the pacing of Weapons is reminiscent of Anderson’s classic, in that it spends so much time introducing each of the different characters before uniting them. That leads to more of a slow build than some might expect from the Barbarian director, especially considering how crazy things get during the third act, which is also similar to Magnolia. And yet, if Weapons threw in a rain of frogs like the one in Magnoila, it would not be the strangest thing to happen in Cregger’s movie.

That’s pretty much where comparisons end, though, because Weapons tells an equally original story, dealing with the grief and suffering of those in the town affected by the disappearance of the kids, but then instilling supernatural elements as it goes along. By the end, Weapons goes full horror with tons of gore that might make one immediately forget any Magnolia influences. Obviously, it’s way too early to tell whether Cregger’s film will have even close to the same impact on cinema culture as Magnolia, but in approaching the horror film from such a unique angle, the filmmaker should continue to be appreciated by horror fans looking for something different.