Barbarian is a particularly bad title for a particularly great horror film. I didn’t see a trailer, didn’t even know the premise, the decade, or anything other than it being in the horror genre. And I loved the build up of surprises and the introduction of characters and actors. This is an amazing film for the first forty-five minutes.. and then a very good one for the rest of its runtime.
The film is about a woman who rents an Airbnb but finds someone else has also rented it. She doesn’t trust the strange man but her options are limited so she stays the night. But there’s something going on in this house… and the deeper she digs, the deeper the madness gets.
This movie might as well have taken the title Nope if Jordan Peele’s Nope hadn’t gotten there first. There’s an amazing “Nope” moment in the film followed by the audience basically needing to shout it constantly for the rest of the movie. I cared for this main character and I haven’t felt that sense of “Don’t go in there!” as badly in a long time.
It helps they cast Bill Skarsgård as the other Airbnb renter… just including the dude who played Pennywise immediately puts you on edge. They had to know what they were doing in casting him… they knew we know he’s been cast as a villain before… so are they messing with us? Is this deliberate misdirection? Or is he a retired killer clown from outer space? I loved not knowing.
The first forty-five minutes of this flick are a perfect example of great suspense and mystery and I’d have rated the movie even higher if they could have somehow kept that energy. But the movie does something clever via a massive tone shift and the introduction of a new character and location. We move from a character we want to survive to maybe one we aren’t so invested in. But their stories collide and it generates a great new dynamic between our two disparate leads.
The final hour of the film is still good, but also gets into some pretty familiar horror territory. It gets a little more traditional jump-out-and-scare-you and a lot more gross than it had been before. It’s still a damn good and scary movie, but maybe less chilling and surprising.
Barbarian may have a bad title, but it’s a great horror flick that I highly recommend. Not as consistent as I’d have liked, but it’s two halves are two excellent examples of the genre and it took courage to make the switch. It works… and it’s a genuine surprise.
Score: 90