Five movies you should watch if Weapons had you at the edge of your seat

If Weapons had you white-knuckling the armrest, you are clearly in the mood for horror that trades jump scares for gnawing dread, fractured mysteries, and vibes that linger like a bruise. Zach Cregger's horror mystery film captures the sinister and the evil in ways that will have you marvel at the plot and the cinematic premise of the film while also trying to figure out what is actually happening.

If you're looking for more of that same brand of horror, then you're in the right place. Here are five movies that echo Weapons in mood and craft, from ambiguous evil to meticulous atmosphere, so you can keep riding that deliciously sinister high.

Hereditary

Hereditary is the modern grief horror touchstone, a family tragedy that curdles into an occult nightmare. After a grandmother dies, the Graham household unravels through sleepwalking and a growing sense of doom until a cult crowns a new vessel.

The film feels precise, suffocating, and tragically fated. Zach Cregger’s Weapons rhymes with that arc. The small town is shattered by the disappearance of schoolchildren, then unveils a witchlike Aunt Gladys who manipulates bodies and minds with a gnarled tree and ritual tokens, with nephew Alex ensnared.

Cregger treats the supernatural as a metaphor for grief, keeps origins ambiguous, and lands on a finale that bruises instead of tidying up. Both films favor tightening, use sound and framing to sustain unease, and treat family ties as pressure points where evil exploits love. If Hereditary makes fate feel inescapable and Weapons makes manipulation feel intimate, then both leave you haunted by trauma that outlives the monster.

Available to watch on: Prime Video

Barbarian

If Barbarian had you checking the basement light twice, Weapons scratches the same itch, just with a colder, wider stare. Zach Cregger wrote and directed both, and you can spot his fingerprints everywhere: setups that feel ordinary until they collapse into chaos, jump-cuts of dark comedy, and the pleasure of watching an audience collectively gasp at something barbaric.

The connection runs deeper than just the director: both films thrive on dread that mutates with every reveal. Where Barbarian traps you in a basement, Weapons traps you in a neighborhood. Either way, Cregger proves he knows exactly how to make horror bite. Both films end on choices that refuse neat closure, but Cregger enhances the horror from Barbarian when constructing Weapons, sharpening the final stretch without sanding off the ambiguity.

And in both, the horror crystallizes around a single unforgettable presence. Barbarian weaponizes the unknown in the basement, while Weapons gives you Aunt Gladys, a deceptively gentle nightmare who slides from folksy to feral in a blink. Short version: same storyteller, same premium-grade anxiety, two different mazes. If you loved how Barbarian toys with your instincts, Weapons does it again on a community scale.

Available to watch on: Prime Video

The Babadook

The Babadook and Weapons may live a decade apart, but both films crawl under your skin in the same way, by turning grief into a monster you can almost touch.

In Jennifer Kent’s film, the Babadook isn’t just a shadow in the hallway; it’s the raw ache of Amelia’s loss, the exhaustion of motherhood, and the kind of pain you can’t bury no matter how many times you lock the door.

Zach Cregger's Weapons takes a similar route, as it lets Aunt Gladys and her sinister tree sprout out and take over the town. It feeds on other people, sucking their life out for the health of its master. It also feeds on Alex's loneliness and his isolation, using it to get him to involve himself in an evil scheme. Both the films ditch cheap jump scares and instead let the horror seep in slowly through silence, sound, and the inevitable.

The monsters in both stories work best as symbols: grief, guilt, survival, and denial. By the end, you're left realizing how the scariest thing about the film wasn't anything horror. But the pure trauma behind all the actions. And that’s why both films stay with you long after the credits.

Available to watch on: Prime Video

It

Andy Muschietti's It and Zach Cregger’s Weapons sit in different subgenres but share a sinister kinship. It externalizes childhood trauma as a shape-shifting predator that feeds on fear and small-town secrets, turning nostalgia into dread. Weapons likewise centers a vanished children mystery that unspools into ritual, grief, and uncanny adult control. Both stories aren’t just about monsters in the dark but about what adults refuse to face: secrets, grief, denial, and the weight of generational rot.

Atmosphere does most of the heavy lifting. In It, the shape-shifting dread seeps from storm drains and abandoned houses. In Weapons, unease drips through everyday settings until the ordinary feels cursed. Neither film leans on jump scares; instead, they plant quiet terrors that bloom hours after the credits roll. Thematically, they echo each other: horror born not just from an outside force, but from a community complicit in its own decay.

Both the stories weaponize children as the core of the horror fest. Both leave you unsettled, reminding you that the worst monsters often wear familiar faces.

Available to watch on: Prime Video

Oculus

Mike Flanagan’s Oculus and Zach Cregger’s Weapons feel like cousins in a horror family, both using uncanny forces to expose trauma and bend reality. Oculus centers on a cursed mirror that manipulates perception and warps memory into violent visions. Weapons stages a fairy tale-like nightmare where Aunt Gladys and a ritualistic tree exert a sinister hold over vanished children. Both films anchor their supernatural premises in intimate emotional wreckage, so the horror reads as grief, denial, and communal trauma rather than simple jump scares.

Each movie prefers suggestion over tidy answers, ending on ambiguous notes that leave a lingering chill. Also, both rely on committed lead performances to humanize the uncanny, with Karen Gillan’s haunted resolve in Oculus and Amy Madigan’s chilling gravity in Weapons giving each film its emotional core.

If Weapons gripped you with communal dread and eldritch oddity, Oculus offers a compact, mirror-faced echo: same emotional logic, different mythic object, same lingering unease.

Available to watch on: Prime Video