Miss Flicks

Barbarian: Film Review

Halloween is swiftly approaching so of course there’s a new horror in town, and thankfully Barbarian is one of the best of the year, even if it has been quite overhyped.

The film stars Georgina Campbell as Tess, who rents an Airbnb in Detroit for the night before a big interview. But when she arrives at the abandoned street, she can’t get into the house. She soon discovers that it’s already occupied by another guest – Keith (Bill Skarsgard) – who rented the place using a different app. With a big day the next day and no available hotel rooms, Tess decides to stay.

That synopsis just scratches the surface of what happens in Barbarian. I’m not going to reveal anymore because I think the less you know the better. The film is shocking and unpredictable and you’ll never guess where it ends up. It’s very smart in the way it subverts classic horror tropes, plays with our expectations and allows us to think we know where it’s going even though it’s about to pull the rug out from underneath us.

The main story is divided into three thanks to two cutaways – one which introduces us to the home’s landlord, disgraced actor AJ (Justin Long), and a flashback about the house’s history. The first third is the best one. It is so scary and stressful because you don’t know what will happen and what Tess will discover in the house. Characters walking around a creepy space in the dark will always be effective for me. At the end of that first section, my heart was pounding so hard and I was watching through my fingers. But the fear of the unknown does a lot of the work and so once you know who or what is there, it’s a bit less scary going forward.

Also, the characters make increasingly bad decisions. I thought the film and Tess were smart initially as the first night was executed perfectly and was not cliched at all. But what comes later will have you shaking your head and yelling at the screen “don’t go there!” or “just leave!” There’s some very silly decision-making in this movie, but at least some are played for laughs, particularly with the ridiculous, selfish AJ.

This doesn’t have many jump scares and favours nerve-shredding tension and suspense but it’s very dark and gross and there are a couple of gruesome deaths. It’s a lot of fun to watch in the cinema and hear everybody’s reactions. The collective experience makes it all the more enjoyable, especially during the silly laugh-out-loud moments.

Writer/director Zach Cregger sharply cuts away from the main action twice. These interludes offer us a reprieve (particularly the first one) and give us a moment to get our heart rate back to normal. At first, I was slightly annoyed by it because it distracted me from the central story and cut away at a crucial moment and left us hanging. But they both tied back to that narrative and made sense eventually.

Campbell has been excellent for years on British TV so I’m thrilled to see her getting her moment to shine. She grounds Tess very well and makes us care for her survival, even if she makes some silly choices. The other two castings – Skarsgard and Long – are interesting because they play with our expectations once again and what kinds of characters we expect certain actors to portray.

It’s not quite as good as the hype made me believe but I enjoyed Barbarian a lot and I love to see original horrors doing so well at the box office.

In cinemas from Friday 28th October