Here’s Where Zach Cregger Got Aunt Gladys’ Magic From

Weapons is one of those horror movies that lingers after you watch it, finding new ways to freak you out even after the lights come up. But the most indelible part of Zach Cregger’s haunting tale is its villain, Aunt Gladys, played by Amy Madigan. We’ve learned about the origins of the character, her style inspirations, and how Cregger calibrated the reveal of her sinister powers. But now Cregger is lifting the lid on how he came up with Gladys’ particular style of magic.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Cregger described his unexpected source material. One was Wade Davis’ The Serpent and the Rainbow book (not the Wes Craven movie adaptation, he specified); the other was the Mekons song “Dancing in the Head.”

“That song is just an instruction manual on how to create a zombie,” he explained. “It’s no singing, it’s just someone explaining to you this ritual. I love it ’cause it’s a weird ritual where you soak a dollar bill in rum and set it on fire and arrange four mirrors for the four corners of the earth and get a shard of a human skull and all these things. I was like, ‘One day, I wanna make up my own crazy, evil recipe.’ This movie was my chance to do that.”

Weapons production designer helped Cregger fine-tune Gladys’ signature “bowl of water” ritual. “It needed to be simple and very digestible,” Cregger recalled. “I needed people to get it the first or second time they saw it.”

Head to EW for more from Cregger, including his detailed explanation of how he and Madigan collaborated on Gladys’ memorable final scene—a frantic foot chase with its own equally unexpected source material, including Raising Arizona and Point Break.

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