Film review: ‘BARBARIAN’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Barbarian is almost a really effective horror film. It’s stylishly shot, makes inventive use of familiar horror settings and is at times genuinely unnerving but it’s also infuriatingly erratic with some bizarre plot devices and clumsy tonal shifts.
The film begins as an impressively tense and mysterious cautionary tale with a young professional woman Tess (Georgina Campbell) turning up to her Airbnb booking to find it’s already occupied. The resident, Keith is played by none other than Bill Skarsgard, yes Pennywise himself, which primes the audience to expect that the seemingly polite and chivalrous young guy will turn evil. All isn’t quite as it seems, however, as another threat awaits Tess and she’s soon in a fight for her life. She’s later joined in her plight by the house’s owner, the sleazy, arrogant actor AJ (Justin Long). To say too much more would be a spoiler as this film takes some very unusual turns.
For about its first two thirds this is a strong piece of horror film making. Director Zach Cregger takes his time layering the tension and cleverly drops clues and red herrings about what’s actually going on. Cregger and cinematographer Zach Kuperstein fashion some impressive looking sequences making the most of the confined and threatening environment and the sense that the victim is alone in a very dangerous place. This appears to be a homage to favourite horror films as Cregger draws on numerous genre tropes such as doe-eyed innocents creeping around dark basements and even employs a score reminiscent of John Carpenter’s moody synth soundtracks for films like Halloween and The Thing.
Unfortunately, the film is let down in two ways. First, Cregger has a tendency to undercut the horror with comical moments, some are funny but most are just irritatingly silly and completely diffuse the film’s tension and threat. When the audience laughs ironically at a scene, the film has a very difficult task making them take it seriously again. The second problem and one definitely not confined to this film, is that after an impressive build-up, the pay-off is disappointing. Admittedly, that is a very difficult trick to pull-off as the build-up relies on the audiences’ sense of confusion and uncertainty about what’s going on whereas the pay-off generally has to answer those questions.
There are also a couple of directions this film appears to be heading that it doesn’t develop and which would probably have made a better movie. First, through its depiction of the crumbling abandoned Detroit homes surrounding the BnB, the film alludes to a more pertinent and realistic horror, the economic devastation wrought by the GFC, earlier economic policies and rampant inequality in so-called first world societies. To some, this context will be more interesting than the horror film. Unfortunately, this is only used as a backdrop and the film doesn’t explore the implications of economic decline beyond making it an aesthetically threatening setting and indulging Hollywood’s tendency to depict poverty and the poor as a dangerous ‘other’.
Also, through flashbacks, the film provides some history to events occurring in the house. Spending more time exploring that backstory then connecting it more believably with the present-day events would have been very welcome. Instead, a character does the old Basil Exposition routine and just tells us what happened. Never mind that, given the very weird and clandestine nature of what occurs in the house, it’s unlikely intimate details would be public knowledge yet, it’s never explained how this person knows this information.
Barbarian bares some comparison with Mimi Cave’s Fresh and Alex Garland’s Men as a film about a mostly loan female fighting for survival in a creepy, threatening house. Despite a very strong beginning, though, Barbarian stumbles in its final act and is the weakest of the three.
Nick’s rating: ***
Running time: 103 mins.
Genre: Horror/ comedy
Classification: MA15+.
Director(s): Zach Cregger.
Release date: 20th Oct 2022.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.