Zach Cregger's Favorite Thriller Is David Lynch's Most Mysterious Masterpiece

Weapons is now in theaters – a dark horror flick about missing children in a small town. The film has received rave reviews – it has a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics are calling it one of the best horror movies of the year.

The director Zach Cregger, who started out as a comedian, has become a big name in the horror genre with just two films – Weapons, and Barbarian, released in 2022.

Zach Cregger Named 'Mulholland Drive' One of His Favorite Movies

But what inspires Zach Cregger himself? He revealed to BFI that his favorite thriller is David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, a film which can be called the biggest mystery of 21st-century's cinema.

This is not surprising, as Cregger shared that he was inspired by Lynch's meditation method when creating scripts.

What Is 'Mulholland Drive' About?

An aspiring actress named Betty came from Canada to Los Angeles to make it in Hollywood. She settled in her aunt's house, where she found Rita, who has no memory of her past.

Betty prepares for her first audition while trying to uncover Rita's secret. Meanwhile, film director Adam is preparing to shoot a new film. However, after he refused to cast a woman named Camilla in the lead role, the project and his bank accounts were frozen.

'Mulholland Drive' Is Still the Most Mystifying David Lynch Movie

David Lynch originally conceived Mulholland Drive as a series for ABC. The two-hour, $8 million pilot was too abstract and failed to impress the network execs, leaving the project in limbo for almost a year.

To adapt the story into a feature-length film, the director had to eliminate many secondary characters, which didn't make the film any more understandable.

Lynch avoided answering journalists' questions about the meaning of the movie and the significance of its many symbols. Therefore, each viewer must determine the meaning of Mulholland Drive for themselves.

'Mulholland Drive' Was a Box Office Flop

The fact that Mulholland Drive, with a modest budget of $15 million, flopped at the domestic box office, collecting only $7 million, seems more like a pattern than an injustice.

Films in the "what the hell was that?" genre rarely become hits, so it would have been more surprising if Mulholland Drive was a resounding success.

What Did Critics & Viewers Think of 'Mulholland Drive'?

• Mulholland Drive has 84% from critics and 87% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes.

• On IMDb, the movie has a score of 7.9/10.

• On Letterboxd, the thriller is scored 4.3/5.