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Director Zach Cregger takes Vanity Fair behind the scenes from some of his most memorable films. From Barbarian and Weapons to his upcoming Resident Evil, Zach breaks down key scenes, revealing the creative choices, filmmaking techniques and inspirations behiind each moment. Watch as he takes us inside the making of his films and shares what went into bringing some of his most terrifying scenes to life.
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00:00Honestly, I just, the movie God smiled on me
00:03when she came into my life.
00:04All hail Gladys, dude, hail Satan, hail Gladys.
00:07Hello, I'm Zack Kreger, I wrote and directed
00:10Barbarian and Weapons and Resident Evil,
00:13and I am going to break down a scene
00:15from each of those movies here today.
00:19Why did you come down here?
00:21Principal Miller and Gladys.
00:32Resident Evil.
00:35One of my rules for this movie was to be hyper subjective.
00:38It's a camera language that I was sort of dabbling with
00:42in Weapons, but I wanted to really go all in
00:44on Resident Evil.
00:45What that means is I want the camera
00:47to be completely tethered to his attention.
00:49Austin has just emerged from a trauma in the sewer.
00:52He's gonna look back into the sewer
00:54to see if whatever's down there is coming after him.
00:56Doesn't seem to be.
00:58And then he looks this way, I don't know where I am.
01:01I'm in this new city, and then he looks this way.
01:03Ah, that's my destination right there.
01:05So I like the idea of having, you know,
01:07the goal within sight.
01:09Okay, so he's on his way.
01:13There's cool music playing here
01:15that Brian and Hayes Holiday did, those were my buddies.
01:17And so I'm living for the majority of this movie
01:20in like a third person over the shoulder shot.
01:23Often I'm in a first person perspective.
01:26And those are my two primary angles.
01:29I have other shots, as we're gonna see,
01:30but those are the ones I'm always returning to.
01:32It's the center of gravity.
01:34Yeah, I mean, I'm making a Resident Evil movie.
01:35It should feel like the Resident Evil games, you know?
01:37That is my mission statement for this movie,
01:39is to make a movie that feels like the games.
01:42And so, you know, to do that,
01:45I have to create a rhythm for the movie
01:47where you're moving from location to location to location,
01:50and every location has a unique threat
01:52in a way that a lot of the games do.
01:54I also need to establish a visual language
01:58that is honoring the visual language of the games.
02:00Yeah, I picked an icy winter scenario
02:02because it looks good, you know?
02:03I think a movie set in the snow
02:06is gonna be cooler to watch
02:07than a movie set in the not snow.
02:10It's funny, this scene is not a scary scene.
02:12You know, this is an action scene.
02:14This is really more like a Saving Private Ryan
02:17kind of a sequence.
02:17You know, as his attention shifts up to this dude on the roof,
02:20the camera shifts up, you know?
02:21So those are the kind of moves
02:22that I'm trying to consistently utilize throughout this movie.
02:26It's like we're tethered to his attention.
02:28And so, you know, it feels like the operator in Austin
02:31had to always be kind of on the same page.
02:33This initial suicide here was really challenging.
02:36So we had a dude up on the roof
02:39who's, you know, harnessed to a crane that was out here,
02:42so he's rigged to that.
02:43And then he jumps, and then he has to get stopped,
02:47because he can't actually die.
02:48So he gets stopped about here,
02:50and then we threw an object later.
02:53We clear him out, and we throw an object.
02:55We drop it from the crane.
02:56It goes all the way down and lands.
02:59And then later in the edit, we blend him with the object,
03:03and we CGI just the actual bottom.
03:06But we have a real impact when he hits the bus stop.
03:09So hopefully, we were able to blend the real dude's jump,
03:14and then the real object's impact, and you can't tell the difference.
03:17And so the final result of that is a shot that looks like this.
03:24Boom.
03:25And I knew it would be better to have him hit a structure rather than just hit the ground,
03:29because, you know, shattering a bus stop is more fun.
03:33Okay, so he's moving, and again, you know, he is kind of throwing our attention up,
03:37which I think is really, again, trying to stay as tethered to him as possible.
03:40So he hears a sound, he looks up, we scoot up after him,
03:45and we see, oh, now there's more people on the roof.
03:47This is going to be so much worse than I thought it was going to be.
03:50Again, here's, watch this, this third-person perspective shifting with his attention.
03:55This shot was really difficult to do, because that is a camera on an arm on a moving vehicle,
04:00and he's running, and trying to stay just in time with him,
04:05and finding that perspective on both sides of a running person, really hard to do.
04:10We only got one take that worked, and thank God we got it.
04:13And then we're off to the races.
04:14So what we did here is we rigged, I don't know how many blood bags on these cranes.
04:21This is actually a fake building, there's no building here, so there's a bunch of cranes here.
04:25This is a CGI building, and we have a bunch of cranes over here,
04:28and they have these 150-pound bags of blood primed to drop and timed to drop.
04:33We rehearsed this on another location where we got his running speed,
04:37and we knew exactly where the cars were going to be and where the cranes were going to be,
04:40and we did a dry run in a parking lot somewhere to get the timing down.
04:44But then we came here, we only have three days to shoot this whole scene,
04:47which is not a lot of time, and we had to just go for it and hope we got all
04:51the timing right.
04:52And we mostly did, and what we did is we dropped these real blood bags, they hit, it's real impact,
04:57and then we used VFX to put bodies over the bags and enhance blood in a couple of these places.
05:03So it's a combo of practical and of virtual video, whatever, you know what I'm trying to say.
05:11We have a camera car following Austin with the camera on an arm.
05:14So his speed has to be consistent every take for the people triggering the bodies to know when to drop
05:21it.
05:21The camera is right behind him at sprint speed.
05:25If he trips, it's like not enough time to pump the brakes really so he can get run over by
05:29this camera car.
05:30If he veers off course, he could get hit by one of these falling bodies that weigh, you know, 150
05:36pounds at least.
05:37And it was really stressful because the reset, we've got white snow,
05:40and so the reset between takes is like an hour at least.
05:44So you only get, you know, a couple of cracks at each one.
05:48Two takes, maybe three takes, you don't want to do three.
05:51So it was like every time we call action, I'm like freaking out.
05:55And I really wanted this one impact to hit this car right here, boom!
05:59Because I knew that I wanted to replicate that impact on the reverse, right?
06:03So we do this shot a few times, we get that timing exactly right on this car,
06:09and then I can hopefully edit with, boom!
06:12That same impact on the reverse, which we did and I think the timing was like perfect.
06:17I don't know how we got that perfect.
06:18So this is now, he's chasing the camera car and we're doing the exact same thing.
06:22We have the cranes in the exact same place, but we've moved all our parked cars down
06:26and I'm hoping you just don't notice that the buildings are identical because we couldn't move the cranes.
06:31So we're just kind of resetting the terrain and doing it all over again, but everything else is just stationary.
06:37And here is where Austin almost died.
06:39One of the bodies dropped too early.
06:41It was supposed to land behind him, but instead it landed right next to him.
06:45And I'll show you where that is.
06:48Boom!
06:48That.
06:50That is too close for comfort, man.
06:53Like if he had been off course and been there, it would have caved him in
06:57and that would have been a wrap on Austin Baby.
07:00That was a really scary moment, but it looked great and it's in the movie.
07:05So, you know, this is also, by the way, obviously this is not, this is not a real hospital back
07:10there.
07:10So that's, I mean, the VFX, the snow is VFX in the air, on the ground.
07:17I mean, it was a monumental amount of VFX going into the shot.
07:20And it's things that hopefully you'd never even notice, which is, I guess, how it should be.
07:25And I really love how the scene ends, where it's just his shrieks.
07:38He doesn't realize the carnage has stopped and we don't realize that he's been screaming like a little baby until
07:44it suddenly goes quiet.
07:45And then it's just him and his little baby screams until he kind of runs out of gas and realizes
07:50that, you know, the danger has stopped for the moment.
07:54The screaming wasn't even done on the day. The screaming is something I found in the edit later, right?
07:59I put the screams in and we, like, it suddenly made the ending of the scene feel like it had
08:04a point.
08:04Yeah, it's something that we found on Weapons.
08:07Austin is so, so funny, naturally funny.
08:09And we really crack each other up on set, you know, every day.
08:14And we have the same sensibility.
08:16So he's a really good partner to kind of always be looking for an opportunity to put a little joy
08:23into the horror.
08:25You know, like, he was cracking me up like crazy when we were making Weapons.
08:28And I knew that, A, he's a formidable actor. Like, he's so likable.
08:32I don't want to be rude, but, like, how do I know you aren't going to try and, like, take
08:37that reward for yourself?
08:37If he can play a thieving junkie and we're all, like, want to take him home and, you know, cuddle
08:42up with him, then I knew that, you know, he was going to be totally up for this job.
08:47And he was, dude. I am supremely satisfied with him in this movie. He's awesome.
08:53Weapons.
08:54I need to make contact with a child's legal guardian. It's something that's not really negotiable.
08:59I need to speak with the parents in person.
09:02Oh, dear.
09:04Look at Amy. I just adore her. I just honestly, I just, the movie God smiled on me when she
09:13came into my life.
09:14All hail Gladys, dude. Hail Satan. Hail Gladys.
09:17I built this set and I had this frosted glass. I knew I wanted to just kind of give her
09:22an entrance.
09:23She couldn't just walk through a door. We had to kind of feel her before we saw her and anticipate
09:28her.
09:29So it was a lot of trial and error with the right frosting on the glass that was going to
09:33allow us to, you know, see just enough but not enough.
09:37Yeah, this was a complicated build and one that I kind of had to really dig in and fight for
09:42because it would have been very easy to just put the couch against the door and let her walk in
09:46the room.
09:47But I knew that she needed this moment. So I'm glad we stuck to our guns.
10:00Principal Miller and Gladys.
10:03Gladys' look was inspired by a few things. The photographer Cindy Sherman was a big primary influence for me.
10:10There's a scene in Twin Peaks where he lands on the tarmac and a woman comes out in a crazy
10:17outfit and does this like code to him and she's got this crazy bright red hair and colorful outfit and
10:24it scared me as a kid.
10:26And so there's something about her color scheme that I knew is like, you know, nature tells us like bright
10:32red is dangerous.
10:33And so I just feel like there's something about these vivid colors that sets off this alarm bell.
10:39She's so repulsive and and attractive at the same time, you know, and she's so natural.
10:46She has this total spark that is just it's it's inherent in Amy's personality and it just she didn't have
10:54to do too much.
10:55You know, she's not working hard. She's letting the wardrobe do the work.
10:58She's confident enough in the scene and the dialogue in the wardrobe to just let that do the heavy lifting
11:04and she's not hamming it up.
11:05You know, and that's that's I think one of the things that's so powerful about Gladys is she's this big
11:09over the top energetic character.
11:11But Amy never never feels like she's sweating.
11:13Oh, well, I hate to say it, but his parents have been feeling unwell as of late and I'm staying
11:21with them to help take care of Alex.
11:23Oh, that's not serious.
11:25The wig was a big one, dude. It's like we had so many different wigs we were trying and when
11:29we finally figured out cutting those bangs would give her this crazy shape and lifting those bangs too high.
11:35So you get way too much cranium. That's when we were like, OK, we've got it.
11:38I always knew I was going to go crazy with the lipstick and the bad eyeliner and the big glasses.
11:44But it was that that cranium that made everything just pop into focus.
11:47I remember when we discovered that, like, hey, cut the bangs like an inch higher than they should be.
11:52And all of a sudden it was like we have something here.
11:55It's a really simple scene. It's just like, you know, two close ups, two people sitting down having a conversation.
11:59But hopefully we're just so interested in what the hell is this lady going to say that it feels kind
12:06of like a thrill ride, I hope.
12:08So one of the things that I like to think about with Gladys is like, how old is she really?
12:13You know, and I like the idea that she could be, you know, somebody in her, you know, 60s or
12:18whatever like that.
12:19And I also like the idea that it could be a completely different scenario and that she's using this very
12:24outdated terminology for a disease that was prevalent a long, long time ago.
12:31Oh, no, no, it's not serious. Nothing terminal. It's just a touch of consumption.
12:35A touch of consumption?
12:37Yeah.
12:38You know what? I'm embarrassed to say, I guess I don't really know what that means.
12:44I thought it was something settlers got on the Oregon Trail.
12:48I only know the word consumption from playing the Oregon Trail.
12:55I thought giving her an antiquated terminology, it just made her, it added another riddle to somebody that's already really
13:03mysterious.
13:04And I thought that was good.
13:06And I gave Amy, when we were talking about this character, I gave Amy two possibilities.
13:10I was like, Gladys can either be this, which is, you know, a normal person with a terrible disease who's
13:19using magic to keep herself alive.
13:21Or she could be this, which is something a bit more eternal and heavy duty.
13:26And I was like, I want you to know, but I don't want you to tell me or tell anybody.
13:30And she was like, okay.
13:31And I love that I still have never asked her for the answer to that question.
13:36And she knows what she is and I don't need to know.
13:38And that's awesome.
13:40Who made the complaint?
13:41I'm not at liberty to say.
13:46Well, this is very upsetting.
13:48It's such a crazy character in the room.
13:50I'm loving it.
13:51I think it's awesome.
13:52But I have no idea if people are going to think this is just absurd and stupid or terrifying or
13:59hopefully a little bit of a both.
14:01I wasn't thinking Oscar, but I was thinking like, this is so special and so much better than I had
14:09ever dreamed.
14:10Zach Craig, our writer director.
14:12I mean, we worked together, but he was just like, do it, go for it, you know?
14:16So I guess it worked out.
14:18I'm not sure.
14:18And I felt so grateful to have somebody of her caliber doing this, this character in the scene.
14:25And that was the moment that to me, I was like, I'm going to be very, very proud of this
14:31performance.
14:32And I am.
14:57I have one rule for horror scenes.
15:02The actor who is afraid in the scene, their fear level, that's as high as the audience is going to
15:08go.
15:08So you need to play that fear maximally to give the audience permission to be scared.
15:13If you're playing it at a six, that's the cap, you know?
15:17So I really applaud George for not needing any prodding from me.
15:21She went into this, like, full level 10, and I think it was the exact right level to play it
15:26at.
15:26And what I really like about this sequence is the use of OTS right here and POV.
15:32I've just always been a big believer that, like, if you have a character walking down a scary hallway, this
15:38shot is doing all the work.
15:39What I really don't care about, and it has nothing to do with her performance, but this shot is not
15:45really helping me so much.
15:47You know, I can't really be scared of much if I'm looking, you know, at just a big, you know,
15:52scary face.
15:53It's like I've got this much to let my imagination run wild, and that doesn't do anything for me.
15:58This shot, a POV, I have the entire frame to use my imagination.
16:03Unfortunately, this is just a hallway, but if it was a room that had, like, different, you know, hiding places,
16:09like, you know, the mind gets to really run wild.
16:11So I like a POV or an OTS if I'm trying to build tension, and I want to live 90
16:16% of my time in the sequence of building dread.
16:18I want to be in their view. So that's why I want to get off her as soon as I
16:23can.
16:24Not that she's not doing a great job, but I want to get back to this.
16:43Bill's really great. I feel like his fear in this scene is like so palpable. I was really, really loving
16:50what he did.
16:51And he also has that face that is just like so bizarre, and it's like you still think he's lying.
16:57You know, this is what I love about this scene is like even now, even at his most kind of
17:02vulnerable and like, and panicked, he's on his hands and knees.
17:04He has been attacked, and so the idea of him kind of crawling towards her, he's just in a full
17:10-on panic attack.
17:12You know, he's become almost an infant in that moment where he's so overwhelmed with fear that he can't even
17:19bring himself to stand and run.
17:20And then what happens here is obviously his head gets caved in, and I am always trying to do the
17:27irreversible fire extinguisher head smash,
17:30which I think is the greatest piece of movie violence ever made.
17:32And I'm trying my best to just, you know, kind of doff my hat to Gaspar because what he did
17:40is incredible.
17:41You can also tell, and you probably can't show this because you guys are cowards, but you could tell,
17:46I originally shot this where she was going to grab his lower jaw, rip it off, and then shove his
17:51jaw into his eyes.
17:53And then, you know, hopefully people are like, I can't believe that there was a giant naked lady in this
17:59basement.
17:59And it wasn't Bill Skarsgard the whole time.
18:01The design of the mother was based on a book I had as a kid.
18:06It was an illustrated Beowulf.
18:10And Grendel's mother in that book was drawn exactly like this.
18:16It was just a gigantic, semi-proportionally correct naked woman with long tangles of dark hair, and she was just
18:23huge.
18:24And it was a striking image for me to see as a little kid.
18:27I remember I would just like look at that drawing of her and just be kind of just fascinated with
18:32it.
18:33And so when I was writing this, and I imagined this woman coming out of the dark, it was just
18:37like, that was just what leapt to mind.
18:39And I found that book, and I took it with me to Bulgaria, and I showed the team, and that's
18:45what we built.
18:46There's really no secret to it.
18:48I just did that illustration, and I think it worked really well.
18:52Thank you very much.
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