Zach Cregger’s Suburban Nightmare
By Eilidh Paterson
In Zach Cregger’s world, the American dream has a rot problem. Something is festering beneath the perfect veneer of suburbia; a wilful refusal to look too closely. From the physical decay of the Detroit neighbourhood that masks literal horror in Barbarian (2022) to the community plagued by social paralysis in his most recent release, Weapons (2025). Cregger turns comfort into corruption, building plots that seem to be going one way before turning sharply on themselves.
In Barbarian, Tess (Georgina Campbell) finds her Airbnb double-booked with Keith (Bill Skarsgård), who exhibits just enough red flags to postulate him as the movie’s threat. Cregger performs a meta-commentary, training his audience to fear visible, modern threats - the dodgy neighbourhood, the strange man - only to completely subvert viewer expectations. The house conceals vast tunnels, haunted by a monstrous figure known as The Mother (Mathew Patrick Davis).
The true monster, however, is The Mother’s creator, Frank (Richard Brake), the house’s original inhabitant who spent decades breeding a cycle of incest and mutilation. A flashback sequence reveals the neighbourhood's past: bright, lively, children playing – the antithesis to the town Tess arrives in. But this idyllic facade overshadows a community unwilling to question: shop workers ignore cryptic explanations, women allow strangers into their homes, and a neighbour is too wrapped up in his own moving plans, because ‘this neighbourhood’s going to hell,’ to notice the screams from within Frank’s home. Visible ruin, Airbnb strangers and violent monsters are Cregger’s emblems of fear, but true corruption began in a realm of blue skies, green lawns - an image of suburban utopia capsized by communal apathy.
The home’s new owner, AJ Gilbride (Justin Long), is a further contributor to Barbarian’s unchecked cycle of negligence. He views the house purely as a financial asset, returning to Detroit only 'to do some liquidating.' When AJ discovers the tunnels, alarm bells are replaced by money bags as he googles, 'Can underground rooms be listed as square footage?' This economic detachment and celebration of torture tunnels as an extra Airbnb detail underscores how gentrification and generational wealth can enable evil. Property is valued over people, and consequently, the house’s horrifying history is almost erased entirely.
If Barbarian explored how evil proliferates inside a single house, Weapons expands this to an entire town. Since it’s still relatively recent, I’m attempting to avoid major spoilers… but briefly, when seventeen children vanish in the small community of Maybrook, the townspeople do not unite but turn inward. Teachers, parents, and police officers become complicit in their inaction - too polite, too corrupted, too self-interested to act.
At the centre of Weapons is Justine (Julia Garner), the schoolteacher who senses that something is deeply wrong before anyone else will admit it. Alongside Arthur (Josh Brolin), a grieving parent, she begins piecing together what happened. The pair’s use of neighbourhood ring-camera footage to track the children’s movement is actually the first example of any investigation that we see, a ridiculous oversight in a town supposedly gripped by tragedy. But Justine’s outsider status and nonconformity make her an easy scapegoat in a community that turns grief into accusation: the ideal witch for a modern witch hunt. In Cregger’s vision, the community would rather target the person asking questions than face the ugly truth.
Every institution meant to protect has already collapsed. Police officer, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), directs his instability towards a drug addict - an easy target. In doing so, Paul hinders a crucial lead in the investigation, and the community's natural inclination to partake in misdirected witchhunts occurs again.
Similarly, the school principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong), prioritises appearances and silence over student safety, warning Justine to stay quiet even as the remaining child, Alex (Cary Christopher), shows alarming signs of neglect. Alex is relentlessly bullied, his father stops picking him up from school, and no one takes notice. Like Barbarian’s neighbours, Weapons’ community chooses comfort over confrontation. Systemic ignorance and misplaced aggression towards outsiders allows the real source of horror to spread unchecked. It takes 128 minutes for the real witchhunt to begin.
Cregger’s horror lies not in monsters, but in the denial and ignorance that engenders parasitic evil. The narrative misdirection of their first acts - a dodgy Airbnb co-tenant and missing children - is a diversion. It blindsides the audience's expectations, ensuring we too are guilty of not seeing true monstrosity until it has materialised. Perhaps Barbarian's plot, then, is a prophetic warning to a town like Maybrook: when people stop looking, the figurative rot always turns physical.
