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Horror director Zach Cregger has big things ahead. After he helmed the 2022 surprise smash hit Barbarian, the Whitest Kids You Know troop member has put a number of high-profile scary stories on his to-do list, including 2026's Resident Evil reboot and this year's Weapons. And thanks to a recent piece of marketing regarding the latter, we're wondering if, among everything he's got on his plate, one of the things Cregger's planning is his own, interconnected horror universe.

Let's back up a bit - In case you haven't caught the (incredible!) trailer for the curiously named Weapons, the basic premise is as follows: An elementary school teacher arrives in class one day to find every one of her students missing, while the other teachers' children are safe and sound. This leads to a community-wide uproar, in which the teacher finds herself catching blame from her children's distraught parents. 

To promote the film, Warner Bros has created a fake website in the vein of The Blair Witch Project, which you can see at MaybrookMissing.com. The site is made to appear like an amateur creation of one of the missing kids' community members, sparse in style and addressed to other citizens of Maybrook. It features creepy footage of the missing children leaving their homes, some salacious talk about the movie's central teacher (played by the Silver Surfer herself, Julia Garner), and in one corner of its homepage, a curious link to a seemingly unrelated story.

That story is headlined "Underground Prison Discovered in Rental Home," and if you click on it, you'll be directed to an article that describes the plight of Tess Marshall, the final girl of 2022's Barbarian. Marshall, played in the film by Georgina Campbell, is said to have "become the focus of a chilling investigation," details of which the movie's fans are already aware. But here's what not explained:

Why would the community of Maybrook be interested in Tess Marshall's discovery?

The simplest (and let's face it, most likely) explanation is that the fake site wasn't made by the fictional community of Maybrook at all, but the movie's marketing team, and thus is just plugging another product. Consider the fact that Barbarian and Weapons are under two different production banners (20th Century Studios and Warner Bros., respectively), and this explanation seems even more likely than a slowly-building cinematic Cregger-verse. But does that mean we won't be watching Weapons with eyes peeled for Tess Marshall and the monster she encountered in her Airbnb?

Not in the least.

Weapons is in theaters August 8.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." We couldn't agree more, which is why we've cobbled together a couple pieces to send a chill up your spine. Join Popverse as we explore:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.