Review: Barbarian (2022)

Barbarian (2022)

Rated R for some strong violence and gore, disturbing material, language throughout and nudity

Score: 4 out of 5

October is here! I had the fortune to watch Barbarian, a film I knew little about beyond the trailer and some good reviews, with a co-worker of mine on a trip to Durango in a theater that was otherwise empty, several weeks after it came out. It was a film where I was told to go in blind and not read up on anything about it before I saw it, and in service to that recommendation, I hope to keep this review short and sweet. Barbarian is not a game-changer, and on a writing level it feels simultaneously underwritten in places and overstuffed in others, but writer/director Zach Cregger is near-masterful in crafting a brutal, fucked-up, old-fashioned low-budget horror flick with a great cast, a scary-ass monster, a hell of a grasp of suspense before it unleashes the monster, a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and awful people getting what they have coming via some spectacularly gory money shots. This one is bound to become a cult classic on home video and streaming, the kind of solid, well-made little flick that the horror genre is built upon.

We start the film with Tess Marshall, a young woman working as a researcher for a documentarian, booking an Airbnb in one of Detroit's rougher neighborhoods on a dark and stormy night, only to find a man named Keith Toshko who booked it first through a different app. Fortunately, Keith is friendly enough to let Tess spend the night while they get everything sorted out... a bit too friendly, as Tess starts to suspect as she realizes that Keith is creeping on her. Then Tess finds a hidden passage in the house's basement, and shit goes sideways in a hurry as the house's secrets come spilling out.

I can't say much more past that. Seriously, go see this movie for yourself and watch all the freaky shit that follows from that point. The trailers were good about not spoiling anything past the first act, which sets up Keith as kind of a creep in his overbearing friendliness towards Tess, leading you to suspect that she's wandering into a trap and needs to get the hell out of there now. Of course, you'd be right... but you'd never guess precisely why.

All I can say is that Cregger has made an intense, claustrophobic thriller with a terrifying villain, a gleefully depraved backstory to such, at least two kills for the ages, and great lead performances by its tiny cast, led by Georgina Campbell as the heroine Tess, Bill Skarsgård as Keith in a role that plays around with his typecasting in "creep" roles, and Justin Long in a role where merely describing his character would probably say too much, except to say that I grew to hate his ass for all the right reasons. This was clearly a "pandemic movie", a minimalistic production shot under tight COVID-era restrictions on a low budget, and Cregger made the most of it. Even if the writing was filled with swerves that felt like they were there just to shock the viewers even at the cost of raising logical questions, Cregger's skill behind the camera meant that they did indeed shock me, and furthermore, they left me with quite a bit more to think about going home than I'd normally expect for a splatter flick like this.

The Bottom Line

I said I'd keep this short and sweet so as not to give too much away, so I'll stop this review here and tell you to check this one out. I already expect to see it become a cult classic in a few years, and I'm excited to see what Zach Cregger does next.