Barbarians Layered Secrets Make It Horrormovie Catnip
The horror film The Barbarian is best suited to viewers who know as little as possible. The film's trailer encourages this to the point where it may put some viewers off: it reveals little beyond the film's original setting. Even in our spoiler-phobic age, keeping secrets makes sense for horror movies, and it's even scarier when the audience doesn't know what's in store. But the true test of a well-constructed movie comes when there are no more surprises. At the end of the 102-minute race, with all secrets revealed, the Barbarian still has a lot to offer. And that's part of what viewers fear, beyond the initial haunting portrayal of the silent horror that can lurk in a home when two strangers are forced together on a very dark night.
Written and directed by Zach Kroeger (formerly of The Whitest Kids You Know comedy group), The Barbarian starts off simple enough. Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb outside of Detroit, where she discovers that it has been booked twice and that a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) is already staying there. Caught in a storm with no other options available and no important conversations in the morning, Tess makes the risky decision to stay the night.
[ Editor's Note: While this review retains most of the surprises from the movie, some minor spoilers follow .]
Tess is a great character in modern horror movies: a young but not naive, caring but kind girl who just wants to get a good job and go back to where she came from. His poor decisions, the ones every horror hero must make, from staying home to exploring its depths, stem largely from his kindness and willingness to believe the best in others.
Keith, to his credit, knows what it's like. He's smart enough to know that Tess has no reason to trust him and every reason to expect the worst. And he tries to increase this awareness by doing everything he can to make her feel as comfortable as possible. However, you can't do anything; The weight and history of many women threatened by many men weighs on this situation and overshadows the barbarian as a whole. Despite Keith's constant attempts to comfort Tess, she and the audience can't really trust him. (Though Skarsgård isn't as recognizable without makeup as the man who played Pennywise in the later It movies, the haunting energy is still present and harnessed.)
This is where The Barbarian begins: a tense story about two strangers forced to weather a storm together, told from the perspective of a woman who constantly wonders if the man she shares a house with is dangerous. Even with Airbnb's modern look, it's a classic horror movie, enough to support a movie about quick and dirty exploitation. But Kroeger is simply using the premise as the basis for something more ambitious, creating a brilliant and bizarre film with thrills that leave viewers wondering.
No director makes a decision lightly, but every creative choice made on The Barbarian is surprisingly well calibrated in a way that rewards intense attention without detracting from a more relaxed and immersive experience. From the Detroit setting (arbitrary at first, but ultimately due to more than aesthetic decline) to the buzz of the sharing economy that provides the film's mainstay, there's methodical execution of the setting and subtly enough subversion. as to deviate from what the audience can assume. . . . However, it is never as dramatic as "El Bárbaro " ends in a completely different place from where it begins.
This is the film's greatest strength: for all its twists and turns, The Barbarian is more a film about recontextualizing what happens on screen than it is about big reveals. His story never pays attention to these dynamics, instead constantly playing on the sympathy of the audience. He asks questions quietly, prompting listeners to defend their assumptions at all times. Is Tess in danger because of Keith? Are they both in danger from the house? If so, whose fault is it? Does it matter if you consider them good people? Does your gender view of the world distort your perception?
The visual simplicity of the barbarian gives the mind freedom to wander. The Airbnb house where Tess and Keith are staying is dark and dimly lit. With a little finesse and imagination, the house doesn't look too bad, but why should someone watching a horror movie be so stylish? Especially when you imagine the familiar iconography behind it, from a seemingly endless dark tunnel to a room where something terrible seems to have happened there.
These are familiar images, and The Barbarian uses them as fuel for speculation that fills the first viewing with horror and drives subsequent viewings around the characters. While Tess, Kit, and the few others they meet are archetypes, they're not blank slates in a nondescript nightmarish town. There are the characters who visit Detroit for a reason, and the history of the city, and its decline in the late 20th century, when the wealthy white community abandoned it, unable to make it their idyllic terrain. - stylish look. - this is an unspoken charge about the film and its horror. Just as Skarsgård and Campbell deftly convey silent shifts in scene energy with small facial expressions, Kroeger's camera moves in small, careful gestures around the set, reminding the viewer of a barbaric setting. a place that overlooks a narrow part. . .
Here Barbarian reveals his secrets. Twisted stories are hard to gauge; Knowing that a movie has one or more left turns can undermine expectations, which are often based more on the viewer's wishes than on the storytellers' ultimate intentions. Fortunately, the changes in The Barbarian are more subtle and terrifying. As the film delves deeper into the house it begins with, its best move becomes one of the oldest in cinema. Kroeger makes sure your biggest fear is in your head so you can figure out where your likes ultimately lie.
Barbarian will debut in theaters on September 9.
