OUT NOW: Barbarian

In Detroit for a job interview, Tess (Georgina Campbell) has booked an AirBnB on the city’s outskirts.

However, when she arrives, she discovers a stranger (Bill Skarsgård) already staying there…

I do not watch movies more than once in the theatre. It is rare. Barbarian is a movie that I want to see again. 

Written and directed by Zach Creggar, Barbarian is one of the best movies I have seen this year.

This movie is so deft in how it understands the genre and gender, and is in constant dialogue with the audience in terms of its expectations, and how they interweave within horror.

This is your classic horror structure in terms of constantly undermining your expectations.

We start out following Tessa (Campbell) as a lone woman at a Airbnb.

The first act of the movie plays on Tess (and the audience’s) suspicions of Keith (Skarsgård), a man who is already at the Airbnb.

Is he an intruder? A creep? A killer?

Skarsgård is well-cast as the socially awkward Keith, a guy who cannot figure out the right cue for any situation.

The situation plays like a slowburn thriller, as the film repeatedly teases a reveal that Keith is the film’s villain, before deflating and then reinflating our suspicions.

This game continues until Tess stumbles upon the tunnels, and Keith subsequently disappears while investigating them.

At this point, Keith is becoming more of a figure of suspicion - Tess follows his desperate cries deeper into the hidden tunnels until, in a shocking turn, he is revealed to be innocent, and our protagonist is attacked by another being.

Cut to black.

In a brilliant shift, we are then introduced to the home’s owner, TV star JD (Justin Long), driving along the California coast.

The bizarre reprieve is undermined when it is revealed that JD has been accused of sexual misconduct. In need of money for legal costs - he has returned to Detroit to sell the house.

Long’s casting as JD is key - his affable exterior works in the same way that Adam Brody’s casting in Promising Young Woman does, as the film removes that veneer to reveal JD is a more callous and selfish figure than he appears.

The film is also plugged into Long’s inherently goofy vibe. As he literally falls into danger, Long gives JD a loose-limbed cluelessness that is hilarious. 

The friend I went to the movie with pointed out that Long’s character also fits the slasher archetype of the annoying clown who usually dies early in the piece.

Barbarian flips it by introducing him midway through and setting up as a possible rescuer for Tess.

JD’s arrival at the house follows the same line as Tess’s, except he hits every trope of the ignorant slasher victim stumbling into danger. He also plays into the gender politics that were highlighted in the beginning of the movie.

 

Whereas Tess was suspicious and scared, when JD discovers the basement he sees it as an opportunity to boost his property value. He is so self-absorbed he does not seem to care about what these tunnels could be for.

I was constantly reminded of that old bit from Eddie Murphy’s comedy special Relentless, about the difference between white people and black people in horror movies. While the movie is explicit about expectations around gender, the casting of the actors is also deliberate in terms of race: Georgina Campbell is black while both Skarsgård and Long are white.

Whereas Skarsgård is stilted and Long is loose-limbed, Campbell’s performance is based on restraint and interiority - Tess is always looking out for danger, and is naturally suspicious of the stranger in her temporary home.

It is worth bringing up the audience at this point.

Barbarian is a very funny movie. It has a pitch black sense of humour.

Horror and comedy work on the same dynamic - set up and payoff.

Barbarian plays out its suspense with such skill that the movie is extremely tense but is consistently hilarious - without ever feeling like it is deflating the characters’ peril. 

My audience was gasping and laughing throughout. 

Hilarious, disturbing and tense, Barbarian is a great movie.