‘Barbarian’ is a strange movie. Released on Sept. 12, this horror / thriller has been making its way to the top of the box office this Halloween.
The premise of ‘Barbarian’ is that a woman named Tess Marshall books an airBNB, only to find it already occupied by a man named Keith. With a storm raging outside and no vacancies left in nearby hotels, Tess has no other choice but to spend the night with this stranger. It is an interesting premise that definitely could happen today.
As per the thriller genre, the plot is full of twists. ‘Barbarian’ does a good job at bottlenecking the amount of information that the audience has, and it causes the audience to keep guessing as they watch the movie.
It is difficult to discuss the horror elements of the film without spoiling too much. There are a few scenes that use visual effects, and they are done well. In the scenes where set design is important, ‘Barbarian’ knocks it out of the park; it also has weird colors where it needs to have them.
The acting in the movie is average. Bill Skarsgård’s performance as Keith particularly stood out to me as well-done, but other than that the acting seemed just okay.
The cinematography in this movie was very well done. There are a lot of tighter shots that succeed in making the audience feel uncomfortable when needed. Towards the end I was squirming in my seat a lot. There are also a few jumpscares that I feel indifferent about. They are there to startle the audience, but it is done to the point where it is almost annoying.
The movie is written and directed by Zach Cregger, who has not done a bunch of directing in the past, but would be most known (to me at least) as one of the founding members of The Whitest Kids U’Know, a cable-TV comedy sketch series.
Considering that Zach Cregger has a background in comedy, it makes sense that there would be a few jokes mixed into the film. In my opinion, they work really well where they are placed, and it is one of the stronger parts of this movie.
At the end of the movie, I felt kind of satisfied with how it ended; but, I was also a little confused because not everything was explained. The confusion comes from more annoyance than anything else–some small aspects of the movie’s plot are just left unexplained. This is definitely not the kind of movie that I would watch more than once because, once the mystery is removed, it does not have a ton to offer.
I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes horror or thriller movies. It checks all the boxes for both, but only during the first viewing.
Overall, I really enjoyed this experience, and I do want to show ‘Barbarian’ to my friends to see their reaction to seeing it for the first time. It really is almost everything I want from a Halloween Flick. If I had to rate this movie, I would definitely say it is a 9/10.
