*Disclaimer - I know I was supposed to go see this with one of you, my sincerest apologies, I could not wait another second to view this film.*
A lot of good horror movies have been released this year. X, Fresh, Hatching (Pahanhautoja), Nope, The Black Phone…and those are just the few that I have seen. I have been rejuvenated by the fact that horror is getting its renaissance, its recognition, it is breaking its own form and metamorphosing into a beautiful, never before seen type of horror. With all of the scary movies that have been made, the tropes that have been done to death, writers and directors have been forced to create something fresh for the silver screen, daring us as the viewers to do away with our boredom and see something new. And Barbarian is a horror movie like no other.
The first third of this film is like any other horror…Tess (played by Georgina Campbell) is greeted by Keith (played by Bill Skarsgård) at an Airbnb that is seemingly double booked. Tess is hesitant to share this rented house with Keith, as any woman alone with a strange man would be, but ultimately gets more comfortable with him as the night goes on. Keith takes the couch, Tess takes the bedroom. In the middle of the night her door opens, maybe by itself, but who knows. She wakes Keith, asks him if he opened the door, as we see the door shut in the background. Keith says no, she goes back to bed, locks the door. She is messing around in the house a bit later and finds a trapdoor in the basement that leads to a dark hallway…and the classic horror movie basement trope unfolds. As horror ensues, as chaos ensues upon Keith and Tess, we get a quick cut to the second part of the film, which starts with AJ (played by one of my favorites, Justin Long) singing in a convertible driving along the coast of Southern California. Without giving too much away, we find out AJ owns the property Tess and Keith are staying in, and AJ is about to go broke so he decides to stay in this house. He finds Tess and Keith’s belongings all over the house, and we find out it’s been weeks since they have supposedly checked out. Before long, AJ finds the trapdoor, and finds the horror that lurks in the basement. Quick cut to the third and final part of the movie, where we get background on who originally owned the house, what happened there, and what is going to happen to AJ, Tess, Keith, and whoever else is lurking behind the mysterious trap door.
It is extremely difficult to recount the plot of this movie without spoiling it. That previous paragraph does not do the film justice because the plot is so intricate, so different, so new. I had high hopes for this movie, and it exceeded all expectations.
Ambiguity and word of mouth is a major part of this film. There are a lot of questions that do not get answered, that the movie begs the viewer to answer themselves. Tess has a man named Marcus who she consistently declines calls from. Keith has a very creepy demeanor that makes him seem like he’s going to be the bad guy, and I believe the director uses the fact that Bill Skarsgård played Pennywise the Clown to trick the audience into thinking he’s the perpetrator. There is a scary woman who lurks in the basement beyond the trap door, to which a side character tells our main characters “She’s not the worst thing that’s in that house,” but the worst thing that’s in that house is mostly up for interpretation, we do not get a clear answer on this, we need to make that assessment for ourselves. AJ’s first scene in the film are his lawyers telling him over the phone a woman is accusing him of raping her, to which we never get her side of the story, we just get AJ’s partial rendition. There are many layers, many facets to this film that we as the viewers need to make assumptions about to try to figure this film out. The ambiguity adds to the creepiness, the scariness of this film, and it wholeheartedly works.
We need to talk about Justin Long. He absolutely kills the role of AJ in this film. In Tusk, directed by Kevin Smith, Long plays an asshole type of guy who isn’t politically correct and is kind of a shitty boyfriend, and he pays the ultimate price. His role as AJ in Barbarian is closely related to his character in Tusk, with a heaping spoonful of Kendall Roy from Succession. AJ is like Kendall Roy without a trust fund, and it’s absolutely delightful. And if anyone has seen Jeepers Creepers, you might know how AJ meets his fate in this film.
I loved this movie. I really want to see it again just to pick up on some things I might have missed. I highly recommend this for horror lovers. I hope the rest of 2022 keeps the horror renaissance alive with many more great films like Barbarian.
10/10
“You cannot get it upset.”