Barbarian Review

Barbarian has become one of the surprise hits of 2022. Made on a modest $4.5 million budget it already has a healthy box-office return and is a critical hit. The question is, has the hype been justified?

Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) travels to Detroit for a job interview and books an Airbnb in the Brightmoor area of the city. However, the accommodation has been double booked and she ends up sharing the house with Keith (Bill Skarsgård). They soon discover a secret room in the basement, and they dare to explore what’s underneath the house.

The horror genre has been going through a long renaissance. There has been the rise of Blumhouse and A24 that have shown that horror films can be critical hits, as well as financial successes. The 2010s were filled with acclaimed films like Oculus, Don’t Breathe, It Follows, Get Out, and The Witch and there has been a new generation of horror filmmakers like James Wan, Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers. Now is a great time for an aspiring horror filmmaker.

Barbarian had a simple setup that many travellers could relate to. Many people have used Airbnb and there’s always that worry about what they are going into. There have been horror stories about people being defrauded in some way and there’s no knowing who you could be staying with. Barbarian takes these fears to the next level. Airbnb’s executives couldn’t have asked for worse PR.

Barbarian also uses Detroit’s long-term issues as a major part of the film’s plot. Detroit has become the poster child for the rust belt’s industrial decline. There has been a declining population, the city infamously declared bankruptcy, and the city is filled with abandoned buildings. The area of Brightmoor looked like it suffered from the zombie apocalypse since the buildings had fallen into decay, the grass had been overgrown and it was devoid of life.

Brightmoor was an area that the authorities had forgotten about, and it would be easy for someone to disappear in. The setting in these abandoned streets made Barbarian a bit like the Don’t Breathe series because those films were also set in the abandoned areas of Detroit. Barbarian and Don’t Breathe were films about the dark secrets that could have happened in Detroit’s forgotten areas.

The events in Barbarian brought to mind some infamous crimes. The most notable were a couple of notorious cases in Austria, and one in Cleveland. However, going into feature details would lead to spoilers.

Barbarian earned an 18 rating in the UK and it was well deserved. When the violence came it was brutal and shocking. One death was so gruesome that even the most hardened horror fan would squirm. It was a film that went down some dark territory, literally and figuratively.

As a horror film Barbarian was effective. The sequence where Tess and Keith first explored the tunnels can rival the digestion scene in Nope as the best horror sequence of 2022. This sequence had a build-up and there was a limited amount of light, so the actions were shocking. There were also some disgusting moments that would please horror fans who like their horror films fucked up.

Zach Cregger wrote and directed the film, and he was clever with what he showed and didn’t show. There were ideas that were so horrific that Cregger knew that audience’s imagination could fill in the blanks. There was also a bit of misdirection that was used to great effect. The film played on Skarsgård’s creepiness which he used to affect in the It movies, and Justin Long was more morally dubious than he has been in other roles.

I went into Barbarian fairly blind. I have only seen one of the trailers, so I was surprised to see the direction the film went, Barbarian ended up feeling like an anthology film since it showed different stories with different characters and had different styles. It all ties together at the end.

Georgina Campbell is an emerging actor in the UK. She has done a lot of TV work, which included the TV film Murdered by My Boyfriend, the Black Mirror episode “Hang the DJ,” and the BBC One adaptation of The Pale Horse. Campbell seems to follow the path Karen Gillan and Daniel Kaluuya took where their first leading roles in American films were modestly budgeted horror films. This worked out well for those two actors and Campbell gave an excellent performance as the lead character, so hopefully, she can copy their success.

Barbarian was a grim, violent, and most importantly effective horror film. It will be a film that will stick in the mind.