Barbarian (2022)
Directed by Zach Cregger
In town for a job interview, a young woman arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that it has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway.
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20 films that influenced Barbarian
What critics say influenced Barbarian
Cregger has said that the inspiration for Keith was Anthony Perkins's portrayal of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Psycho.”
Audiences may be expecting something supernatural, but here too, “Psycho” seems to be the reference point, as “Barbarian” builds shock upon shock, giving viewers another mother they won’t soon forget.
But like horror classics of the past, namely Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho , you never know what awaits you when you spend the night somewhere unfamiliar.
Others of this ilk include Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), the snowbound Frozen (2009), and last year’s Wrong Turn—shockers that anticipate our assumptions and defy them.
From the first, overdetermined shot of Tess’s temporary sanctuary and potential prison, shot so it appears to be the only structure on a residential street, to the reveal of the rental’s carefully delineated interior (larger on the inside than it is outside), and on through claustrophobic shots of the hidden rooms and tunnels under the rental (an homage, in part, to Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs).
The music (credited to Anna Drubich) recalls John Carpenter’s secondary themes in Halloween with its percussive, dissonant repetition.
Remember, there’s a creepy basement and if you’ve seen the trailer, it feels like Cregger is paying homage to the 2008 found footage thriller “Quarantine,” a remake of the much better 2007 Spanish film [*REC].
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Cregger deploys a structure reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)—or, if you prefer, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007).
Even as she begins to let her guard down and venture into meet-cute territory with Keith, Cregger never puts us fully at ease; the film at times plays like a version of Before Sunrise that entertains the notion that Ethan Hawke’s character might actually be Ted Bundy (Skarsgård’s casting is a stroke of genius in this regard, his boyish good looks never quite letting us forget that he’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown).
The social horror of Jordan Peele is felt as an influence — Peele is thanked in the film's credits — but "Barbarian's" thrills are more of the throwaway B-movie variety than those of "Get Out" or "Us," and its attempts to elevate itself have the opposite effect and knock it down a notch.
“Barbarian” is not quite on par with Jordan Peele’s acerbic social redirect “Get Out” (2017), but it’s in the ballpark’s parking lot.
His forte up until now has been almost exclusively comedy; however, as Jordan Peele has recently demonstrated with Get Out (2017), Us (2019), and Nope (2022), the line between comedy and horror is a very thin one, indeed, and it only takes a small step to go from one to the other.
It’s no “Get Out,” but it’s a hell of a lot of fun — with a little something to say as well.
Although Barbarian does not have the same thoughtful subtext as Get Out , Cregger uses Detroit’s modern history to add layers of meaning.
“Barbarian” is not “Get Out” any more than “The Untouchables” was “The Godfather” or “The Batman” is “Seven.”
If you were a young woman traveling alone, would you stay in a double-booked rental with someone whose sunken eyes make him look like Steve Buscemi’s unsettling character in “Fargo”?
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It’s a cinematic version of Fight Club, less of an actual narrative and more akin to a Godfrey Reggio attempt at experiential manipulation.
Georgina Campbell as Tess Marshall, who arrives one night at a rental property in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood — the blight of the city is used as a backdrop as effectively as it was in 2016's "Don't Breathe" — only to find it's already occupied by a man, Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgård, Pennywise in the "It" movies, minus the demonic clown makeup).
Between 2016’s Don’t Breathe and Barbarian, there’s an emergent sub-genre of horror: Detroit Dystopia.