Barbarian: Horrifically Clever

It was a dark and stormy night...

So, whatever is poor Tess Marshall to do? A double-booked Airbnb isn't exactly a good reason to sleep outside in Detroit of all places, especially not in the rain. And besides, Keith seems like a nice-enough guy. What could possibly go wrong? In the case of Barbarian, a lot.

This is a movie I'd heard legends about from my fellow film and television majors, but it's one I didn't get the chance to see until last night, a considerably lighter and airier one than Tess's, mind you. And while it's not entirely able to outrun some of the shortcomings of its own ambition, it is still markedly smarter than a large percentage of horror movies being made today, starting with that whip-smart and refreshingly original premise - the double-booked Airbnb. Having watched my fair share of horror movies, I couldn't imagine that much good could happen to Tess by movie's end, but Barbarian proved itself a consistently difficult movie to grasp or predict, in a good way. Overlapping rental listings aren't unfamiliar to contemporary America, but no one, to my knowledge, has made a horror movie about them before now, and Barbarian walks the tightrope of being familiar enough to fear yet different enough to never feel fully comfortable watching.

The acting and dialogue of Barbarian are, simply put, astounding in every way, flowing as naturally as a real-life conversation might. Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgard are particularly remarkable as Tess and Keith, putting forth absolutely magnetic performances with an undeniable chemistry between them that contributes greatly to this small-scale and character-driven story. Barbarian also molds a wonderful contrast between rich and poor, normal and creepy, oftentimes behaving like two different movies altogether in ways that might make you double-check that you have the ad-free version of whatever streaming service you're watching it on. The occasional regularity of this movie's scenery makes its suffocatingly creepy moments seem all the more suffocating, all the more believable. It's likewise an incredibly unpredictable movie, and I found myself second, third, and fourth-guessing the motives and integrity of nearly every character.

The decaying atmosphere of Barbarian is incredibly creepy, and I like how patient this movie is just to let us sit in and ponder the cinematic equivalent of the barely-seen shadow lurking in the dark. Nevertheless, I'm less enthused with some of its almost-anthological storytelling. I was really starting to be drawn to and interested in some of the characters and the seeming laser focus on their lives, and Barbarian needlessly complicates itself in the name of scale, tacking new story arcs onto itself that don't do it enough favors for as much time and attention as they're given. To some degree, I can understand a writer needing his movie to be longer, but Zach Cregger's solution only waters down an otherwise excellent film. Still, you can run a marathon despite a few missteps, and Barbarian certainly runs - down, down, down into a suffocating and decaying cinematic darkness nearly as all-enveloping as the tomb itself.

It may be a somewhat uneven movie at its occasional worst, but at its familiar best, Barbarian is a superbly well-made, intoxicatingly well-acted, and relentlessly unsettling horror movie that made for yet another horrible pre-bedtime watch choice on my part. Though it may degrade to a level of pulp storytelling when given enough time and chances to, Barbarian still manages to find that dangerous place where pulp meets intelligence, where contemporary meets dangerous. Don't sleep on this one, but don't watch it before bed either, or sleeping will probably be the last thing on your mind.

Barbarian - 8/10

Proverbs 3:33