Zach Cregger’sWeaponsis a critical sensation. The highly anticipated horror film became one of 2025’s most anticipated movies thanks to a captivating trailer, which sold a novel premise and promised some incredible scares. The resulting film has paid off with the movie earning 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, tying withSinners, another acclaimed horror film from a visionary director.Weapons, along with Cregger’s prior film,Barbarian, have solidified him as one of the best directors working in horror.
Much like fellow acclaimed horror director Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger actually got his start in comedy. Cregger got his big break as part of the comedy group,The Whitest Kids U’Know, whose sketch series ran for five seasons from 2007 to 2011. In 2009, at the group’s height of popularity, Zach Creeger and co-star Trevor Moore wrote and directed a feature film together, one that would be Creeger’s directorial debut. While Cregger is now riding high off the critical accolades ofWeaponsandBarbarian, his debut picture was called “the worst movie of 2009"by CNN’s Tom Charity. The movie is the sex-comedy,Miss March.
What Is ‘Miss March’?
Miss Marchis a 2009 sex-romantic comedy that was in many ways pitched asThe Whitest Kids U’Know’s big Hollywood break. It was supposed to take the group’s comedic sensibility and bring it into a mainstream film, with the hopes of launching them into success. Cregger co-directed, co-starred, co-wrote, and produced the film alongsideWhitest Kids U’Knowfan-favorite Trevor Moore (the rest of the group opted out).
Miss Marchcenters on Eugene Pratt (Cregger), a young man who preaches abstinence and plans to have sex with his girlfriend Cindi Whitehall (Raquel Alessi). Yet the night it is going to happen, he accidentally falls down the stairs at a party and ends up in a coma for four years. Tucker Cleigh (Moore), Eugene’s best friend, ends up waking him from the coma by hitting him with a baseball bat.The duo discovers that, while he was in a coma, Cindi has become a Playboy playmate, and the two embark on a cross-country road trip to reunite Eugene with Cindi.
Cregger and Moore were given the script by Fox Atomic, a short-lived subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, to generate comedy and horror films, which resulted in28 Weeks LaterandThe Rocker. While the duo originally didn’t want the project, they saw it as a great opportunity to take on a creative challenge and put their own spin on the story. However,Miss Marchis a standard, paint-by-numbers road-trip sexy comedy.
The Lackluster Response
Miss Marchopened in theaters on June 08, 2025, likely hoping to take advantage of some high school and college kids out on spring break…but nobody showed up.Miss Marchopened in 10th place at the box office in its opening weekend, bringing in just $2.4 million over three days.In the end,Miss Marchgrossed $4.5 million worldwide, unable to make back its $6 million budget.
If the box office reaction toMiss Marchwasn’t bad enough, the critical reaction was worse.Miss Marchhits at a 5% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 79 reviews. Katey Rich,writing forCinema Blend, gave it a 1/5 and said, “Miss Marchcaters so heavily to its juvenile audience it forgets the actual humans who should have been at the center of the story.“Nick Schager ofSlantcalled it “So awful as to make heterosexual men actively loathe Playboy.”
What Happened Next?
Miss Marchcame and went, and aside from the very few people who saw it, the movie became a cultural blip. Cregger and Moore returned to finishThe Whitest Kids U’Know, which concluded its fifth and final season in 2011. The final season contained segments forThe Civil War on Drugsat the end of each episode, which were later cut together and released as a feature film on Prime Video, for which Cregger is credited as a director and can be seen as his transitional film betweenMiss MarchandBarbarian.Barbarianwas released in theaters on August 16, 2025, and became a box office and critical hit, garnering a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and $45.4 million worldwideagainst a $4 million budget. A 5% for Miss March to 92% forBarbarianis an 87% between films for a director, a very big leap for Cregger.
Miss Marchco-director and co-star,Trevor Moore, passed awayon Jun 05, 2025, at the age of 41. Moore died from an accidental fall from his upstairs balcony, resulting in blunt force trauma. Toxicology reports suggest that alcohol in Moore’s system might have led to his fall. Shortly before his death, Moore had tweeted out saying he wanted to be called a “local sexpot” in his obituary, one that many publications honored when writing about his passing. It is likely a bit too much to read into the fact thatWeaponsstarted having its first screenings on the four-year anniversary of Moore’s death, or that the movie’s inciting incident revolves around a tragedy happening around 2 am, shortly after the time that Moore passed away, but it is notable.
Miss Marchmight be a terrible movie, and it might not be the best film to start a directing career on…but it makes for an interesting one for Zach Cregger. He started with a poorly-received generic sex comedy in the 2000s and has shifted into some of the most acclaimed and buzzy horror movies of the 2020s. He started out going down the career path people expected from comedic actors, and when that failed, he forged his own path and followed his passion, one that is now paying off. If Cregger went from making the worst film of 2009 to one of themost critically acclaimed movies of 2025, you may do anything.
