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| Courtesy of 20th Century Studios |
Tess
Marshall (Georgina Campbell) is headed for Detroit for a job interview and
lands a rental home via Airbnb when she discovers there’s another tenant
already booked in her place, a strange young man named Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgård). Out of options thanks to an unresponsive landlord,
Tess reluctantly agrees to stay the night and resolve the booking conflict the
following day. But soon she discovers a
hidden room deep within the walls of the basement leading to a cavern of untold,
unspeakable horrors far worse than anything she could possibly imagine.
Something
of a quasi-anthological horror film which jumps freely between concurrent
characters and storylines including but not limited to a hazy flashback
rendered in fullscreen against the otherwise widescreen frame, Barbarian is truly all over the
place. Working in a subplot involving a
shady Hollywood actor AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) in the midst of a MeToo scandal
which sends him fleeing to Detroit where he crosses paths with the film’s
protagonist, the film is tonally jarring as it shifts freely from elongated
scares to goofy gross-out sight gags.
Visually
the film is an arresting if not labyrinthine production, lensed handsomely by
Zach Kuperstein in long, unbroken takes letting the unease and dread of the
environment soak in. The score itself by
Anna Drubich is an electronica drenched sonic nightmare that is positively
unnerving married to the sound design and vistas onscreen. Then there are the performers with Georgina
Campbell making an excellent scream queen, Skarsgård is dependably creepy and
awkward and Long, a veteran of horror himself, offers up his most complex and
despicable character yet.
A
mostly good if not a little insane mixture of horror and comedy in ways that go
together and don’t, Barbarian generally
gets the aura and attitude of Detroit, Michigan right while also treading
similar ground as the recently-released The
Black Phone which also dealt in fears of caverns and imprisonment. Though not as successful as the Ethan Hawke
starring horror with the rules and seriousness of Barbarian being tossed out the window as it presses on, those
looking for a wild, gross, scary and funny ride if you don’t think too hard on
it will find much to enjoy here.
--Andrew Kotwicki
