BARBARIAN: The Wilder Side of Unbound Horror

There’s rarely a dull moment in Barbarian but also rarely a moment where you think you’ve figured the film out. The allure of high-minded horror has conditioned audiences to seek something more out of the genre, to find the strong message present within the film. With the advent of Jordan Peele, the audience is not only craving more socially-minded horror but looking for it as well with everything that graces the big screen.

This film is built as a subversion for the audience member who likes to snap their fingers and go “Ah, yes, THIS is what the movie is about.” This picture plays almost like the ultimate counter to this mindset, never offering an easy resolve for this twisted picture of dark basements, torture, sexism, family desires, gentrification, and so much more.

The Unpredictable House

The entire film centers around a house in a poor neighborhood of Detroit. It’s being used as an Airbnb and two guests have unexpectedly scheduled the same date. We meet Tess (Georgina Campbell), a woman in town for a job interview. She arrives to find Keith (Bill Skarsgård) already inside the house.

The red flags immediately go up for this situation, occurring on a dark and stormy night. And yet the night proceeds smoothly. Keith does his best to prove he’s no serial killer who has lured Tess into his trap. Everything seems to be fine but the staging has conditioned the audience to expect something sinister.

It’s this playfulness with expectations that makes the film such a ride. During the night, we’re led to believe there may be some supernatural force present. It’s only later when we learn of the dark secrets that lie in the basement. The deeper that Tess goes, the more the madness compounds without a clear answer.

Sure, Go Into the Darkness

There’s a great moment of comedy when Tess first discovers the secret room in the basement. Her initial reaction to revealing a dark hallway behind the wall is to respond “Nope.” It’s that joke you always hear about how horror movies would end if the characters simply refused to engage. Okay, but then what? You can’t just end the movie right there. So how do you push your characters further into scary scenes?

I have to imagine that at some point writer/director Zach Cregger just said, “Screw it, I’m gonna make her go down that hallway anyway.” This is where there’s going to be heavy divergence in the audience. You’re going to get the audience who screams back at the scream while others are simply going to laugh at the boldness to just force these characters into frightening scenes.

And, honestly, it’s refreshing to have the film just zoom straight to the scary parts. That’s because there are some genuinely creepy and unexpected scenes waiting in the darkness. There’s thankfully more than just someone waiting in the shadows waiting to kill.

The Madness of Men

If there’s a more pronounced theme throughout the film, it’s certainly the toxicity of men. While Keith tries to be the cautious nice guy who avoids the trappings of awful men, the c*cky actor AJ (Justin Long) is the polar opposite. He’s committed rape and is losing everything. His career fails and he finds himself trying to sell off his Airbnb.

But just in case it seems like there’s too much of a binary here, the film will whip away to yet another man involved in all this. Frank (Richard Brake) is a man of the 1980s who watches his home crumble in his quiet misogynist ideals for a family. His acts are never fully defined to make this brief origin of evil so simple.

Both of these actors give great performances, but Long is a particular highlight for his over-the-top nature as the dude you love to hate. He slings homophobic slurs like it’s nothing, tries to rationalize rape any chance he gets, and makes all the wrong calls. He also nearly becomes self-aware of the story, believing that he has a redemption arc coming his way. Unfortunately for him, this is a bit of a dark comedy and it’s way more fun if the sexual assaulter gets killed in a grotesque way.

The Goodness of the Gross

The staging of Barbarian is such a ride of ideas that zoom past the screen that it uses its gore and grossness well. There are some vile shots of heads being cracked open and one particular moment involving breastfeeding that is sure to make some audience members squirm. It’s all devilishly bizarre but also used quite sparingly.

I appreciated the slow build to these moments as well. Long before we get our first glimpse of the monster who lurks in the basement, we’re treated to such terrifying sights as a room with a bed, camera, and blood stain on the wall. We get to see cages in a dark corner. We see a room with a mattress and a TV with a VCR playing an instructional video on a loop.

There’s a playfulness you can feel coursing through this film’s veins. It has the same energy as an animator who might get bored drawing the same thing over and over again, deciding to include something surreal in one frame or just veer off into a different style. This freewheeling nature makes this film such a fascinating experience of a director who knows how to toy with our expectations and looks like he’s having a lot of fun doing it.

Conclusion: Barbarian

Barbarian is viciously absurd enough to surprise even the most jaded of horror fans with its surreal and playful nature. The subversion is so irresistibly juicy in how it dices up its narrative into wild juxtaposition that is so wonderfully bizarre I couldn’t help but fall for its strangeness. This is the perfect type of film for the horror fan burnt out on high-minded horror and is thirsty for something willing to try something more unhinged.

Barbarian was released in theaters in the US on September 9th.

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