‘Barbarian’ Review: The horror film of the year has landed
It’s hard to review a film you’ve watched through your fingers. I saw about 65% of Barbarian, the latest fright-fest by writer and director Zach Cregger. For the other 35%, I was an absolute wreck. Foolishly, I took my girlfriend along for the ride. For a week building up to the showing, she had begged me to bring somebody else, having already revealed that the last horror film she’d watched had left her unable to step foot in the jarred foods aisle (don’t ask me why) for weeks.
This gave me a degree of comfort. “No, this is good,” I told her. “We’ll scream together.” In the end – traitor that she is – she was totally non-plussed. She just sat there and pounded popcorn at 100mph. “It made me feel safe,” she later confessed. Meanwhile, I was fully prepared to dash for the exit, not because I wasn’t enjoying myself (Barbarian is undoubtedly the best horror film of the year) but because everything in my body was telling me to run for safety.
Protesters in Greece are currently occupying Airbnbs in an attempt to fight back against the holiday rental company’s control of the housing market. They’d be better off showing prospectors Barbarian; it might just be the best piece of anti-Airbnb propaganda ever devised. The film opens on the outskirts of Detriot, where Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) has booked a house in a rundown neighbourhood. When she arrives at the property, she discovers, much to her annoyance, that somebody is already inside: Keith, a deceptively charming young man played by Bill Skarsgård.
With a storm raging outside, the pair are forced to spend the night together. Cregger utilises a slew of well-worn horror tropes to make us feel like we’re on stable ground. All the markers are there: Ted Bundy-ish nice guy at the door; bumps in the night; hidden passage in the basement – Barbarian makes itself almost damagingly predictable. Of course, there’s no safe ground here. Horrors lie below.
We love Tess from the off. We love her strength; her acknowledgement that one surefire way of getting murdered is to explore the hidden tunnel in your rank basement. “Nope,” she declares at one point, casting a light into the passageway. That’s the thing about Barbarian: it’s surprisingly funny. Cregger previously wrote and starred in the American sketch comedy show The Whitest Kids U’Know – and it shows. Comedy and horror both depend on the accumulation and eventual release of tension, and Cregger’s control of tension is impeccable.
Watching Barbarian frequently felt like being strapped into a rollercoaster I was desperate to get off. The film’s most terrifying moments are full-on waking nightmares, so when Cregger cuts – as he often does – to a sunny suburban street (daylight is always reassuring) or a site away from the house, all you want to do is thank him for offering you this brief respite before the horror begins again.
Of course, eventually, we begin to understand that these safe places aren’t safe at all; they are simply haunted by a different kind of monstrosity, one frequently male and predatory. On the train, my girlfriend turned to me with a mournful look in her eye: “You know we can never book an Airbnb again, right?” Barbarian is in cinemas from October 28th. Just in time for Halloween.
