Barbarian follows a woman staying in an Airbnb in a rough neighborhood of Detroit who gets more than she bargains for when she finds a man already staying there.
Barbarian is B-movie camp. It feels like it’s from the same grotesque weird wicked world that Sam Raimi is operating in. The twists are surprising, scares genuinely frightening, and comedy sharp. See it in a theater with a crowd.
Don’t read this review. Barbarian is a movie that is best enjoyed unspoiled. And when I say unspoiled, I really mean it. That’s not to say it can’t be enjoyed entirely knowing what it’s about. But where’s the fun in that? It’s like a magic trick. The same way magicians use misdirection, distractions, and spectacles to hide how a trick is done, director Zach Cregger tricks you into thinking the movie is one thing. But while he’s showing you his left hand is empty, his right is getting ready to shock you. And unless you’re a boring cynic, you want to be tricked.
It’s the same way I felt about James Wan’s Malignant, which feels like a spiritual sister to Barbarian. Both movies mine the tropes and imagery of Giallo flicks—a genre of movies popularized in Italy that combine elements of suspense, horror, and psychological erotic thrillers. The result is a maximalist horror that never fails to shock you with its devilishly fun twists and keep you entertained with delicious camp. At any given moment you’re not sure whether to laugh, cry, or just lose your damn mind. I, and the rest of my audience, seemed to be doing all three. Grab a bowl of popcorn, your closest horror-loving friend, and go for a ride.
For those who aren’t going to heed my warning, I’ll try to keep the rest of this review relatively spoiler-free.
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The first act of Barbarian will feel familiar to horror fans, whether it’s the camera movements reminiscent of Leigh Whannel or John Carpenter-esque score.
It’s almost as if Cregger wanted to prove that he’s done his horror homework before completely flipping the genre on its head. There’s an almost cozy feeling when Tess (Georgina Campbell) drives up to the front of an unassuming single-family home at night… in the middle of a rainstorm. Yeah horror fans, your alarm should be going off. If it wasn’t already, it should be blaring when Tess finds the key in the lockbox already gone. Even worse, when she calls the phone number on the faux-Airbnb listing, it goes to the voicemail of a home management company. However, her luck sees a turn—for the worse or better we’re not sure—when a man answers the door.
Keith is tall and handsome, but has a bit of a creepy edge to him. Bill Skarsgard, best known for his terrific turn as Pennywise the Clown in It, is perfectly cast. His look alone perfectly exudes a charmingly endearing energy that is alluring, but creepy at the same time—it would confuse any sensible person’s stranger danger senses. His apologetic and kind tone gets Tess to accept his invite to share the space while she sorts out her housing situation. Skarsgard’s performance continues to toe the line between genuinely charming and creepily rehearsed—but whether there is more to him is unclear.
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The movie actively ratchets up the tension even as Tess’ fears are assuaged in a perfectly calculated slow burn that keeps you searching for the twist—trust me, you won’t find it.
When Tess steps out of the house the next morning to go to the job interview she’s in town for, she sees the state of the neighborhood. The house she’s staying in is lovingly renovated, but the rest of the neighborhood is a dilapidated ghost town. All this setup eventually leads to Tess returning to the home and finding a hidden corridor in the basement out of the house.
From there, the movie takes pivots to the grotesque, absurd, and downright batshit. But what I love is that it doesn’t feel the need to explain itself or its lore further than needed. Some would call those plot holes—I’d call it strategic information withholding. Barbarian almost makes itself immune to story criticism because it only gives you enough to piece your own background story together. The same goes for its potential social commentary. It could follow It Follows and Don’t Breathe in the Detroit-horror subgenre that touches on race and class. However, it never fully forms those ideas—but it doesn’t spend valuable time on them either.
There is a #MeToo subplot that takes the movie to a new place from the first half—Justin Long makes an appearance that I wish was hidden in the marketing. And while the message may be obvious, it helps tie the absurdity into a satisfying character journey. Barbarian isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s like Sam Raimi movies or Giallo films. If you know you know. Like Evil Dead 2 or Malignant, Barbarian feels like it’s from the same grotesque weird wicked world where twists are surprising, scares genuinely frightening, and comedy sharp. See it in a theater with a crowd.
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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.