2022, d. Zach Cregger - Disney+
If you're hitting this post before Toasty's post... a bit of warning... basically the same warning I heard countless times before every podcast that talked about this film (and that was like 6 or 7 of my regular podcasts)... this is one of those films that the less you know before entering the better. And I mean knowing absolutely nothing. Not even the synopsis on the movie booking site. Definitely not the trailer. Just know nothing. Because this film reveals itself like an onion, just layers upon layers.
The short review: it's a blast. It's a well made film, with really good acting, a lot of great creepy scares, and also a lot of big laughs. Aspects of it don't hold up to intense scrutiny but none of it matters while watching the film, because it just keeps revealing itself in more and more surprising ways. But that's already saying too much.
So, seriously, if you have any interest in watching this film, turn back now.
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So you're still here...or you're back after watching.
I'll be blunt, because I don't want to set expectations too high, Barbarian isn't a great movie, and yet, it's a really, really fun experience. Like Malignant it's just ridiculously entertaining, but unlike Malignant it has purpose behind its jump scares and tropes-playing. Toasty gets into some of the early specifics, but the film, whether you like the payoff at the end or not, brings it all together.
Barbarian comes from the mind of sketch comedian Zach Cregger, who, like Jordan Peele, is able to tap the same vein for both horror and comedy quite expertly. Both comedy and horror derive from the unexpected, and I found myself laughing at the same time as my heart was utterly racing throughout this film. And also like Peele, Cregger seems to either be innately good at positioning his lens, or has found a brilliant cinematographer in Zach Kuperstein (not to mention the lighting department) who deliver some of the best underground tunnel imagery in a long time.
The film is like (at least) four different horror stories in one. At first, as Toasty explained, there's the Air B'n'B horror, of finding your rental is already occupied. This is all taken from the feminine lens, the cautiousness and intensity of facing a stranger in exceptionally uncomfortable, suspicious circumstances and never fully letting your guard down. Here though, Tess (Georgina Campbell), tries to do everything she can to be cautious and mindful. The film at the same time plays with the expectations of the other side, first by placing Keith, played by Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgard on the other side of the door. Handsome, tall, imposing, with those sunken sleepy eyes... he's intriguing but also a little off-putting. His awkward congeniality and up-front acknowledgement of all the cautious moves that Tess is makig only heighten the tension, rather than deflate it.
Even as the film starts to put us at ease about Keith, it never fully relinquishes that tension, our guard is never really down around him. But it finds new terrors to confront us with, like mysterious noises at night, doors open or closing seemingly on their own, and Keith's night terrors. Then, the next morning we see the neighbourhood, an old Detroit suburb, completely abandoned save this one house.
Later that day, we discover the second horror film. Tess, coming back to the B'n'B from a job interview is chased down the street by an unhoused man, screaming at her to not go in the house. The secrets of the house start to unfurl, a secret door to a secret hallway and later a secret room (a video camera, a filthy mattress and a bucket). Is this something to do with Keith? When he shows, and Tess tells him they have to leave, Keith can't just believe her and needs to go see for himself. And when he does, he disappears for too long, which means Tess goes looking for him, to find one more trap door, and a long, deep stairwell to underground tunnels full of darkness and disturbing things, and something moving amidst it all.
Our second act, and third horror, finds Justin Long's AJ, working Hollywood actor, just living high on life driving along the California coast, when a phone call rocks his world. Long and short, he's cancelled. The film toys with, for just a few moments, whether he's innocent of what he's being accused of... but really it's clear he is, just he doesn't know it. He doesn't think himself a villain. But he is. And his journey is the horror of facing the music, of there being repercussions for his actions, bringing him to the house he bought as an investment property and wants to liquidate for his defense case.
It's the comedy and the horror of AJ, a man who, upon finding his house scattered with other people's belongings, thinks only the worst for himself, and not any sense of concern for them. Upon learning Tess' identity, does he do any legwork to find out more about her, whether there's any trouble that may have befallen her? Not a lick. And when he finds the secrets hidden beneath, his immediate concern is not what terrors could have created such places, but rather, how can he capitalize upon them, can he count it all as additional square footage in the sale of the house, but his careless, carefree explorations (so drastically different in tone and swagger than when we followed the exact same steps a Tess) find the same trouble coming for him.
Act 3 brings us our biggest nightmare, stepping back in time 40 years to the dawn of the 1980s, same neighbourhood, the shiny brightness of Detroit's lustre not yet faded (but looming). We meet the house's original owner, Frank (the Night King himself, Richard Brake), a tall, lanky, sallow man with a deep voice with little to say. He leaves the neighbourhood on an extra creepy expedition for diapers, plastic sheets and gloves, talking about home births, and not a single good vibe coming off him. Then he spies a woman as he leaves and we learn at least some of his modus operandi. It's the film's origin story, so to speak, and also a very short segment of the film. It's deeply unsettling, not just for what we do see, but what is left hanging.. all the insinuation of what this man does and the lengths he goes through to conduct his ugly deeds.
When we return back to the present, our "monster" is exposed (and I don't just mean fully naked) and the film sits perched precariously, teetering between absurdity and scary. In a way the film doesn't want us to be horrified of this monster, because, as Tess is warned, there's something even worse inside. And inside, even deeper in the tunnels, AJ finds yet another room, a room the monster won't go near. Inside is Frank, and AJ is confronted with at least a few of his secrets. The point is AJ, as a predator, isn't like Frank, but that doesn't make him any better of a person. Whereas Tess, she IS a good person, the lengths she goes to in order to rescue AJ, and the price she pays for it is a large part of the point.
This is a film about how men and women look at the world. It's a film that points out that men, generally, have a hard time believing or trusting women, even about the smallest of things, never mind bigger things. It's a film that highlights the everyday tension of being female in a world of men. It's a film about the ugliness that men bring into the world, an ugliness that both lingers and spreads. It may not all quite hang together under intense scrutiny, but it's an intensely fun movie, well acted, great-looking horror movie that actually has something to say. It's only been out a month and it's already a cult classic.
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