About the film (courtesy of 20th Century Studios):
A young woman traveling to Detroit for a job interview books a rental home. But when she arrives late at night, she discovers that the house is double booked, and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to spend the evening, but soon discovers that there’s a lot more to fear than just an unexpected house guest.
Barbarian gets one solid nod right off the bat for doing something that you’d think is very elementary in nature. The trailer, as shown below, does not give everything away. In fact, after watching this film in its entirety, I appreciate what was cobbled together that much more. A trailer’s job is to garner interest from perspective viewers in the hopes of hooking them to see more based on a couple of minutes of a well-crafted tease. Many films bungle this basic concept by pandering to the lowest common denominator and oversharing. 20th Century Studios did themselves a solid by making whatever choices that led to this two minute sales pitch.
The overall premise to this horror thriller is pretty straightforward and is a situation that a few people have undoubtedly experienced. Furthermore, even if you haven’t dealt with the dreaded double-booking of a venue, Airbnb, etc., you can absolutely imagine how off-putting and frustrating this occurrence might be in your own lives. This, my friends, is the hook that first reel you in. Everyone loves to say what they’d do a situation like this, and it becomes a curiosity competition to witness the error in these poor characters’ ways versus how we’d think we’d handle it in real life.
Just like with most horror films, Barbarian relies on its characters making very questionable and sometimes, certifiably insane, decisions in order to further the plot along. In small doses, this is tolerable, but when they begin to mount exponentially, plausibility and patience starts to wear on your psyche. And this is where the original piece written and directed by Zach Cregger will push you over to the negative side of things.
Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgård are the two main actors that build and start getting this plot rolling. Some of Skarsgård’s performance is a little cringeworthy, but I suspect he has been directed to act in such a manner in order to assist the tone and thrilling nature. For me though, it is kind of distracting to see such “soap opera-ish” overacting. It’s not overly terrible, but it does detach you from the story being told sometimes because a voice in your head might be saying, “c’mon man, really?” Justin Long and Richard Brake are two of the supporting actors that you’ll see a lot of. Again, not the best but not the worst.
Barbarian starts off strong and intriguing, as you you mentally work to try to put the pieces together. As it goes though, it loses some of its mystique and definitely, believability. A final nitpicking observation that, as a born and raised native Detroiter, I’m qualified to make. Why is it that these movies that want to be set in Detroit (or other cities that some of you folks are from), can’t do a tiny bit of research or use a bit more principle photography, and get provide a bit more accuracy in your settings?! License plates (not only the plates themselves, but also the placement…we don’t use them on the front bumper) are an easy thing to research. Is that asking too much?
Barbarian provides decent entertainment with a few tense moments and maybe even a couple of jump scares. Some of the elements and structure reminded me of The Descent (2005), which was a very good and engaging horror film that did just about everything right. And then some of this reminded me of Kevin Smith’s Tusk (2014), which also starred Justin Long and may be the reason I subconsciously dusted off that memory comparison. Still though, it’s a solid effort that should be worth your time…for the most part.
You can see and judge Barbarian for yourselves on in theaters starting Friday, September 9th with early showings Thursday evening. This film has a runtime of 102 minutes and is rated R for some strong violence and gore, disturbing material, language throughout and nudity.
