Dave Franco
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It lacks the sophistication of recent films by directors like Jordan Peele, this is not “Get Out” or “Us,” but basks in its own absurdity.
Just look at Jordan Peele (Get Out and Us), John Krasinski (A Quiet Place), and Mark Duplass (the Creep films).
Having said that, there are hints of M.Night Shyamalan in Franco’s style, while Jordan Peele’s Get Out also feels like something of a tonal touchstone.
As a director and writer (here working with Joe Swanberg on the script) he isn’t quite on the level of Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning debut with Get Out, which went well outside its genre to be a socially smart satire while genuinely earning its frights, but at least for its first 55 minutes or so of a tight hour-and-a-half running time, The Rental is actually an effective, foreboding, character-driven exercise.
There’s a very Get Out vibe to the film’s first act, setting up seemingly normal circumstances for a seemingly normal set of friends.
The fifth character is the caretaker of the house (Toby Huss), who's creepy and possibly racist, in a Get Out-style character beat that unfortunately goes nowhere.
What lies beyond that thick, rolling fog that swallows everything at night seems like a direct reference to John Carpenter’s The Fog or a vague nod to Stephen King’s The Mist .
The Rental recalls Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation in tone, but its denouement isn’t quite as satisfyingly strange.
Like Karyn Kusama’s brilliant The Invitation , Franco isn’t afraid to let us question what is truly going on for a beat too long.
Or compare The Rental to Karyn Kusama's The Invitation, another horror-thriller set all in one house and in which things quickly escalate near the very end.
What lies beyond that thick, rolling fog that swallows everything at night seems like a direct reference to John Carpenter’s The Fog or a vague nod to Stephen King’s The Mist .
Some of the film’s creepier design elements also echo Drive ’s (2011) late-game shift into a quasi-slasher territory, an unexpected influence that Franco thankfully refrains from overemphasizing.
The “cabin in the woods” is such a horror-movie cliché that when somebody finally got around to making a movie about horror-movie clichés it was literally called The Cabin in the Woods.
“Barbarian,” a low-rent, at times risible freak show, joins the ranks of such newly evolved Airbnb-horror film titles as “The Rental” (2020) and “You Should Have Left” (2020).