Weapons director Zach Cregger has revealed the true personal story of a close friend’s death, which inspired his word-of-mouth hit horror film.

The movie, starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Benedict Wong and Alden Ehrenreich, follows the mystery of 17 children who disappearin the middle of the night in a small town in Pennsylvania.

But despite the fictional story following a fantastical narrative, Cregger said it is “an autobiographical movie in a lot of ways” about the death of his best friend and collaborator Trevor Moore in a tragic accident in 2021.

“I was working on post-production on Barbarian when my best friend died very suddenly in a really awful accident,” he told Rolling Stone.

“Look, like the rest of the world, I don’t want to watch another horror movie about grief,” he explained.