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United States · 2022
Director Zach Cregger
Starring Richard Brake, Justin Long, Bill Skarsgård, Georgina Campbell
Genre Horror, Thriller
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Tess is traveling to Detroit for a job interview, so she books a rental home. Arriving late at night, she discovers that the house is double booked, and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to spend the evening, but soon discovers that there’s a lot more to fear than just an unexpected house guest.
Barbarian ends up being a masterclass in tension and unpredictability. It is scary without leaning too hard on tropes, making for a truly entertaining film. It is a damn good-looking movie anchored by great performances all around.
There are depressingly few pleasures to be had here, and one of them is at least, for a while, playing detective trying to figure out just what on earth is buried at its centre.
San Francisco Chronicle by Bob Strauss
An unnerving thriller that never goes quite where you’d expect, this feature writing/directing debut from Zach Cregger (“The Whitest Kids U’Know”) also does monstrously amazing things with lighting, sets and special effects makeup.
It is an experience built around surprise revelations and plunging into the unknown. What is found there is not nearly as impactful as the actual journey itself, making for a mixed bag of horror and humor that rises above its lesser parts enough to hold together.
Consequence by Clint Worthington
Undoubtedly, Barbarian will raise comparisons to last year’s Malignant, a similarly wild-as-hell horror flick that zigs and zags down all manner of crazy roads. And to be sure, there’s a similarly perverse glee to be found here, as Cregger toys with your expectations before jumping you to another element of his insane narrative.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Director-screenwriter Cregger displays an obvious perverse glee in guiding his audiences through his outlandish twists and turns.
With a chillingly relatable Airbnb setup, Barbarian mines multiple real-life scenarios and fears to unleash some truly unhinged terrors. It’s no “Get Out,” but it’s a hell of a lot of fun — with a little something to say as well.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Katie Walsh
Cregger slowly builds bone-chilling and suspenseful sequences up to screechingly operatic moments of face-melting horror, and then swiftly cuts to a different chapter, making a hard left into a completely different mode, taking us all on the roller-coaster ride. His facility with comedy also aids in these jarring tone switches, and Barbarian is as funny as it is terrifying.
Barbarian is one of the wildest horror films in years from its combination of subgenres to full-throttle approach to unapologetic exploitation themes.
The most impressive thing about “Barbarian” is that Cregger keeps developing his twisty plot well after he sets everything up. Messing with viewers seems to be his guiding dramatic principal, from playful camerawork to unpredictable plot twists. Bless ‘im.
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