Spoiler Alert: Spoilers follow for WeaponsOne week into its release, it’s already time to call it:Weaponsis the breakout hit of summer 2025. On top of rave reviews from critics and a strong opening weekend at the box office, Zach Cregger’s sophomore feature has also earned an “A-” CinemaScore rating, one of the highest ever for a horror film. And watchingWeapons, it’s not hard to see why it’s gotten such a passionate reaction from audiences. In what’s already been a banner year for horror cinema, Cregger’s picture stands out with its effortless blend of genre thrills and thematic complexity, and it virtually demands to be watched in a packed house as the twists and turns unfold.
Cregger’s debut,Barbarian, was already a twisted delight, butWeaponsis a huge step forward for him as a filmmaker, as it’s a significantly more ambitious work, but it’s also more confident on a technical level and in its handling of tone. And it sees Cregger channeling almost all of his clear influences, from the emotional complexity ofPaul Thomas Anderson’sMagnoliato the visceral terror ofThe Shining. Yet one of his biggest influences is maybe the most unexpected.
How Did Stephen King Inspire ‘Weapons’?
As previously mentioned,The Shiningwas a huge influenceonWeapons, most notably in how several key shots throughout the film are framed. During the climax, when Alex hides from his parents in the bathroom, it’s impossible not to be reminded of Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. YetThe Shiningarguably wasn’t even the Stephen King adaptation that most inspired Zach Cregger.
That honor goes toNeedful Things, a 1993 film based on King’s novel of the same name. The story centers around a mysterious figure, Leland Gaunt, who runs an antique store in Maine (it wouldn’t be a King story otherwise). Once his business opens, he works to sow chaos within the community, requesting his customers to play pranks on each other, which begin small but quickly escalate. Interestingly,Cregger wasn’t inspired by the story itself (though the parallels with the setup ofWeaponsare unmistakable), as the film got mixed-to-negative reviews, but by the trailer.
As he detailed last month to CinemaBlend, “You know, theNeedful Thingstrailer promised something that my imagination just went nuts with when I saw that as a kid. And I had a different experience when I watched the movie, but the trailer, I was just really into a small town just imploding over one central mystery. And so I think that might have also been present when I was writing.”
‘Weapons’ and ‘Needful Things’ Have Striking Similarities
Yet while Cregger has insisted that the text ofNeedful Thingsdidn’t shape the overall story ofWeapons, there are nonetheless some striking parallels. To begin with,the elderly antagonist ofNeedful Things,Leland Gaunt (Max Von Sydow), shares many of the same motivations asWeapons’ big bad, Gladys (a phenomenal Amy Madigan), in that they both wish to evoke chaos and hysteria within a small town. And both characters showcase how sometimes evil can be hidden in plain sight, underneath a seemingly benevolent exterior.
These villains are also largely able to evade consequences (even while Gladys gets a hilariously gruesome death) by taking advantage of the local community and encouraging people to scapegoat others when things seem off. The plot ofNeedful Thingskicks into high gear when Leland secretly manipulates his customers into playing pranks on each other, drawing upon their shared histories and animosities towards one another. Stephen King wrote the original story to suggest Leland as a Devil-type figure and a personification of temptation, easily able to convince his subjects to give into their baser instincts.
Meanwhile, Gladys is more of a literal threat than a metaphorical one, butshe’s similarly able to evade suspicion within her town’s community by dividing them against one anotherand thus keeping them distracted from her actions. This can be seen most prominently with school teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Farner): since all the disappearances came exclusively from her classroom, she’s immediately looked at with suspicion, and her resulting conflict with Archer (Josh Brolin) means both of them remain ignorant of Gladys’ threat.
Of course, the similarities between the two films are mostly surface-level.Needful Thingsexplores the dark impulses within everyday people that we’re (hopefully) scared to actually act on (and it admittedly gets too didactic in emphasizing this point), whereasWeaponsis explicitly about grief, both personal and communal. And stories that illustrate the darker secrets within an idyllic small town have been around for decades (Twin Peaksperfected this angle). But the similarities are even more striking than the differences, and even if Cregger didn’t explicitly intend to pay homage to one of Stephen King’s most divisive adaptations, he certainly found a way to remix its ideas in a way that felt fresh and exciting inWeapons.
Weaponsis now playing in theaters, whileNeedful Thingsis available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV.
