Review: ‘Barbarian Tears Horror Movie Customs To Shreds
Author: Mark Kennedy | press agency
The film "The Barbarian" begins with heavy rain and a nighttime thunderstorm. Pretty good for a classic horror movie. Stick to formal dresses.
Two hours later, you'll see almost every horror convention - from self-closing doors to freaky monster mothers and underground torture chambers - mixed with ingenuity. Even the title is wrong.
The Barbarian marks the successful debut of writer-director Zach Cregger, who is a master director and has a latent talent for social satire that approaches the level of Jordan Peele. It will somehow make you laugh out loud in oases of humor before the horror reappears.
It all starts at midnight on a rainy street in a seedy Detroit neighborhood when a young woman (Georgina Campbell) discovers a stranger (Bill Skarsgård) is living in her Airbnb house. I know what the protocol is for all this,” he told her. Their awkward little dance—checking booking receipts, offering to sleep on the couch—seems like a little story about gender roles and violence. will turn into a horror movie with skulls shaking eyeballs.
Make no mistake: Cregger accompanies us every step of the way. Skarsgård's role as a flippant character is tinged with his role as Pennywise, and the film's setting is a bit confusing, with the Detroit department blowing up along with the Airbnb house. It was actually filmed in it in Bulgaria.
Adding to my mystery later was the appearance of Justin Long, who plays a prolific TV character on a new show called Chip of the Block, an actor long associated with good comedies. Somehow, Krieger conforms to Hollywood conventions outside of his film as well.
Despite the quality of the acting, the real star is a beautifully decorated house, but a cookie cutter in a sea of torn and damaged houses. There's a noisy basement with a huge room with a dirty bed, a bucket and a camera. But there's something else: an eerie cavernous space below. Cregger can almost be heard in front of two basements where our heroes are trained for horror films. Someone says, “You are safe. Another replied, "I don't think so." (By the way, of course, this is not the case.)
It is a joke that Campbell spends a lot of time running away from home, and soon after, when he returns there, several bystanders loudly yell at him to get into his Jeep Cherokee and run away. .
Addressing real social issues - stripping, misogyny, character returns, gun accidents, police misconduct, etc. - is what raises the level of the film's twisted genre absurdity. There may be a monster in the house, but outside forces keep that monster inside.
This is the era of "barbarism" - online rental bookings, smartphone flashlights and property listings by square meters - and yet it is timeless, like a severed hand being used as a club. It was expected, but impossible to predict. Worth booking a night soon.
"Barbaric"
3 out of 4 stars
Rating: R (for extreme violence, gore, objectionable material, profanity and nudity)
Duration: 103 minutes
