Zach Cregger’s Weapons is a important sensation. The extremely anticipated horror movie grew to become considered one of 2025’s most anticipated motion pictures due to a charming trailer, which bought a novel premise and promised some unbelievable scares. The ensuing movie has paid off with the film incomes 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, tying with Sinners, one other acclaimed horror movie from a visionary director. Weapons, together with Cregger’s prior movie, Barbarian, have solidified him as top-of-the-line administrators working in horror.
Very like fellow acclaimed horror director Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger really acquired his begin in comedy. Cregger acquired his huge break as a part of the comedy group, The Whitest Youngsters U’Know, whose sketch sequence ran for 5 seasons from 2007 to 2011. In 2009, on the group’s top of recognition, Zach Creeger and co-star Trevor Moore wrote and directed a function movie collectively, one that might be Creeger’s directorial debut. Whereas Cregger is now driving excessive off the important accolades of Weapons and Barbarian, his debut image was referred to as “the worst film of 2009” by CNN’s Tom Charity. The film is the sex-comedy, Miss March.
What Is ‘Miss March’?
Miss March is a 2009 sex-romantic comedy that was in some ways pitched as The Whitest Youngsters U’Know‘s huge Hollywood break. It was presupposed to take the group’s comedic sensibility and convey it right into a mainstream movie, with the hopes of launching them into success. Cregger co-directed, co-starred, co-wrote, and produced the movie alongside Whitest Youngsters U’Know fan-favorite Trevor Moore (the remainder of the group opted out).
Miss March facilities on Eugene Pratt (Cregger), a younger man who preaches abstinence and plans to have intercourse along with his girlfriend Cindi Whitehall (Raquel Alessi). But the night time it will occur, he by accident falls down the steps at a celebration and leads to a coma for 4 years. Tucker Cleigh (Moore), Eugene’s greatest buddy, finally ends up waking him from the coma by hitting him with a baseball bat. The duo discovers that, whereas he was in a coma, Cindi has turn into a Playboy playmate, and the 2 embark on a cross-country street journey to reunite Eugene with Cindi.
Cregger and Moore got the script by Fox Atomic, a short-lived subsidiary of twentieth Century Fox, to generate comedy and horror movies, which resulted in 28 Weeks Later and The Rocker. Whereas the duo initially did not need the mission, they noticed it as an ideal alternative to tackle a inventive problem and put their very own spin on the story. Nevertheless, Miss March is a typical, paint-by-numbers road-trip horny comedy.
To say it’s “impressed” by Street Journey can be beneficiant, because it takes plot factors and scenes from that movie closely, together with the likes of Porky’s and American Pie. It additionally feels very very similar to an commercial for Playboy, together with a big cameo by Hugh Hefner. Miss March is full of loads of gross-out humor, together with a operating bit about diarrhea, and loads of misogynistic jokes. It is vitally a lot a bro-movie, however one that did not seize audiences’ creativeness the identical approach that The Hangover would later that yr.
The Lackluster Response
Miss March opened in theaters on March 13, 2009, doubtless hoping to benefit from some highschool and school children out on spring break…however no one confirmed up. Miss March opened in tenth place on the field workplace in its opening weekend, bringing in simply $2.4 million over three days. In the long run, Miss March grossed $4.5 million worldwide, unable to make again its $6 million funds.
If the field workplace response to Miss March wasn’t unhealthy sufficient, the important response was worse. Miss March hits at a 5% on Rotten Tomatoes primarily based on 79 critiques. Katey Wealthy, writing for Cinema Mix, gave it a 1/5 and mentioned, “Miss March caters so closely to its juvenile viewers it forgets the precise people who ought to have been on the middle of the story.” Nick Schager of Slant referred to as it “So terrible as to make heterosexual males actively detest Playboy.”
What Occurred Subsequent?
Miss March got here and went, and except for the only a few individuals who noticed it, the film grew to become a cultural blip. Cregger and Moore returned to complete The Whitest Youngsters U’Know, which concluded its fifth and remaining season in 2011. The ultimate season contained segments for The Civil Warfare on Medicine on the finish of every episode, which have been later reduce collectively and launched as a function movie on Prime Video, for which Cregger is credited as a director and will be seen as his transitional movie between Miss March and Barbarian. Barbarian was launched in theaters on September 9, 2022, and have become a field workplace and demanding hit, garnering a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and $45.4 million worldwide in opposition to a $4 million funds. A 5% for Miss March to 92% for Barbarian is an 87% between movies for a director, a really huge leap for Cregger.
Miss March co-director and co-star, Trevor Moore, handed away on Aug. 7, 2021, on the age of 41. Moore died from an unintended fall from his upstairs balcony, leading to blunt power trauma. Toxicology stories recommend that alcohol in Moore’s system may need led to his fall. Shortly earlier than his demise, Moore had tweeted out saying he needed to be referred to as a “native sexpot” in his obituary, one which many publications honored when writing about his passing. It’s doubtless a bit an excessive amount of to learn into the truth that Weapons began having its first screenings on the four-year anniversary of Moore’s demise, or that the film’s inciting incident revolves round a tragedy occurring round 2 am, shortly after the time that Moore handed away, however it’s notable.
Miss March is likely to be a horrible film, and it may not be one of the best movie to start out a directing profession on…however it makes for an fascinating one for Zach Cregger. He began with a poorly-received generic intercourse comedy within the 2000s and has shifted into among the most acclaimed and buzzy horror motion pictures of the 2020s. He began out happening the profession path folks anticipated from comedic actors, and when that failed, he solid his personal path and adopted his ardour, one that’s now paying off. If Cregger went from making the worst movie of 2009 to some of the critically acclaimed motion pictures of 2025, you are able to do something.