Zach Cregger

Cregger spent years in sketch comedy before Barbarian, and the films after it kept the same instinct for a premise that turns partway through. A woman checks into a double-booked Airbnb and finds a stranger already there in Barbarian, and the house holds much more to be afraid of than the other guest. Weapons opens on seventeen kids from the same class who walk out into the night at 2:17 AM and disappear, all but one, and lets suspicion land on their teacher, who says she had nothing to do with it. His first film, the sex comedy Miss March, shares almost nothing with the two that followed.

Signature

• A premise that resets partway through, changing what kind of film it is.
• Ordinary domestic space, a rental house, a school, a neighbourhood, turning hostile.
• A mystery structure that withholds one piece of information from the audience.
• Horror paced with a comedy writer's sense of timing and release.