Zach Cregger Movies Ranked
I have been doing this blog for many years, and I have never done a director ranking before. But with Resident Evil coming out and Zach Cregger being one of my favorite directors working today, I thought I would rank all three of Cregger’s directed movies. Let us get started!
3. Barbarian: To be perfectly clear, Barbarian is a great movie. If this is his weakest movie then it just shows that he is incredibly talented. The big reason this movie is in last place is not a testament to the quality of this movie but rather a testament to how great his other movies are. What I love about this movie is that it kept me guessing and up until the third act, I really did not know where this movie was going. It sets up this mystery of what is going on with this AirB&B and why exactly was it double booked and from the very beginning it makes you wonder. We will talk about this more with Resident Evil, but this movie creates this unsettling environment and setting of what is going on. The interaction between Bill Skarsgård and Georgina Campbell at the kitchen table with the wine is this interesting scene where you are not sure what exactly is going on. The way that Skarsgård is acting is slightly off that you raise your suspensions about him. As soon as you think you have it figured out and you think Skarsgård is in on it, it subverts the expectations and reveals he was completely innocent. It is one of the best mis-directions in a movie where you think he is involved with it, but he is not. Cregger also does a great job of getting great performances out of his actors, so Skarsgård shows how versatile she is where he can play the creepy Pennywise the Clown in IT, the commanding boss in John Wick Chapter 4, and then here where he’s playing this totally normal and awkward guy. Justin Long is another fan here, he is so weirdly charming and able to deliver these incredibly funny moments with a straight face and it works. Campbell as our female lead, I think is easily the least established of our cast and she is good in the movie, but I do not feel like she has quite the moments to stand out as Skarsgård and Long do. As far as negatives go, a reason the film is ranked in last is because the final answers I did not find as interesting. To be clear, the final answers did not ruin the movie for me, it is still like a B+ movie for me. But compared to Weapons which I thought had very satisfying answers and a more engaging plot, I did not feel like Barbarian quite had that. Overall, Barbarian is still a good movie and one that I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end.
2. Resident Evil (2026): This one has turned out to be a bit more polarizing than I was expecting. It seems like a lot of fans of the Resident Evil video games are frustrated by Cregger’s choice to leave from the traditional video game source material. That did not bother me because I have not played a single second of a Resident Evil video game. I was excited for this movie and went into this movie as a Zach Cregger fan, not a Resident Evil fan. Resident Evil (2026) is easily Cregger’s most straightforward film. His other two films are told out of order with flashbacks and going back in time, this movie does not have that. The movie is told in real time where we are following Austin Abrams’ character as he is trying to deliver this item to a facility. Throughout the film, we are seeing what he is seeing and noticing the same details he notices at the same time the audience does. One of the things that Cregger talked about with this movie is that he wanted to make it feel like the audience was playing the video game. What he means by that is there is a sequence in the movie where the lead character finds a gun that is out of ammo, so he must find ammo while this creepy monster is coming towards him. Which from my understanding is how the Resident Evil video games work as these survival horror games try to find weapons while stopping the threat that is coming towards you. There is something fun about that experience with having this movie that is all about surviving and the experience. With video game movies not having the best reputation, Cregger comes in and does something so fresh with it and I like that. So much so that Resident Evil is easily my favorite video game movie of all time simply because Cregger was involved behind the camera. From there, I alluded to this earlier with Barbarian, but I love the creepy and unsettling atmosphere that Cregger creates with this movie. Once the creepy stuff starts happening about 15 minutes into the movie, it never lets up until the credits roll where there is always something creepy and unsettling happening. With its constantly changing environments every 7-8 minutes there is always a new threat, a new horrific thing happening to the point where the movie does not get repetitive with what it does. I think some of the humor in the third does not fully land, some of it could have been cut. But overall, Resident Evil is one of 2026’s best movies and the best video game adaptation of all time.
1. Weapons: This was the first Cregger movie I ever watched, and because of that this is his most fresh and unique movie. As I did not have the experience with Barbarian, so I was not familiar with what Cregger can bring to the table and I did not really see a trailer for the movie. I went into this movie excited for it because all the early buzz of the movie was fantastic. I saw the film opening weekend and I absolutely loved it. This is my favorite movie of 2025 and one of my favorite movies of the decade. I have now seen four films and every time I rewatch it, it just solidifies that statement of me loving this movie. Like Barbarian, Weapons is this horror mystery where this inciting incident takes place with the group of kids going missing and the audience and the characters in the movie are trying to figure out what happened and why. I love that it is told with chapters, and each chapter is from the perspective of a different character where different information is learned and revealed so the audience is putting the pieces together as it goes along. Every chapter ends with a cliffhanger that makes you go “oh that’s interesting” and it makes you want to see what is going to happen next. When the chapter about the teacher ends with her hair being cut, it was a shocking moment and, in that moment, I was fully on board with the adventure of the film. It is a film that is all built around the final answers and reveals, and it was so easy for Cregger to produce an unsatisfying answer and ruin the entire movie. Luckily, the answers that were given were satisfying and I felt like they concluded the movie nicely and wrapped everything up very well. It is also incredibly funny where there are all these great jokes and one-liners in here that are great, Josh Brolin’s F-bomb I thought was great. Speaking of Josh Brolin, him and the entire cast did a great job. The ensemble is such a pivotal piece of the film and with everybody being great it means the movie can work on another level. The big standout here is Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys. I had not heard of Madigan prior to this movie, and she was the one that I left the movie thinking about the most. I remember leaving the theater and thinking to myself, I do not know if she is getting an Oscar nomination but she 100% deserves it. She did not just get an Oscar nomination; she ended up winning the entire thing and so well deserved. She is one of our great horror villains, that is creepy and unsettling while also weirdly charming at the same time. You put it all together and you get this movie that I absolutely loved and every-time I think about and rewatch it; I continue to love it. This is EASILY Cregger’s best movie and one of the best movies of the decade.
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