Starring: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgard, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Two young people double book a house and find the house is not what it seems.
This reviewer had the advantage of knowing little about Barbarian except some snippets from the trailer (which tend to be from the first part of the film only), that it had been made on a small budget and had been successful at the American box office. If you plan to see Barbarian and know little, don’t read on until after you have seen it.
October is the month for the release of horror films, Halloween Ends, for instance, as well as several more arresting horror films such as Smile and Sissy. Barbarian turns out to be one of the better horror films.
It can be recommended for horror fans, non-horror audiences will not be going along to see it. Although, it is not always a horror film. The first section is an exercise in creating an eerie atmosphere – night, darkness, pouring rain, decaying and derelict outskirts of Detroit, a lone house, a mistake in bookings, a young man in occupation, Keith (a sympathetic Skarsgard) and Tess (an engaging Campbell) arriving at midnight with her booking at the same house. They are quite a likeable couple, and it would have been nice for everything to be turn out comfortably but, more dread, even more eerieness, and a brutal gory sequence with quite a shock.
Then a change of pace, unexpectedly, the first part of the film left dangling, so to speak. Here we are, fancy car, cruising a coastal highway, loud music, AJ Gilbride (Long) singing along. The next disturbance, however, is not horror film shock but personal horror for this character, echoes of the Me Too# movement and an accusation of sexual assault against him. How could this connect with what we have seen? Well, in order to raise money for his court costs, he decides to sell some of the property he owns – and, here is arriving at the house with which we have become familiar, both pleasant upstairs and sinister basements, and the tone of the film turns to terror.
Eventually, it moves into the horror area, especially with some monstrous characters, confrontations with Tess and AJ, a quick flashback to the Reagan era which gives some background to what is happening in this house 40 years later (improbable as it may seem).
So, the last part of the film is a combination of the eerie with terror, dark basements, sinister creatures, tortures in the darkness, but, building up to a climax on top of the tower and some unexpected behaviour from AJ (well, considering his obnoxious character, not so unexpected), and some kind of resolution of what has happened in this haunted house.
In fact, the characters are well drawn, the writer-director offers quite a blend of the creepy, terror, horror – not a great number of grisly sequences, which may make it more watchable for a wider horror audience than those who just go for the slasher stuff.
A surprisingly successful example of this kind of terror/horror.
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