movie review barbarian 2022

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Barbarian Reviews

Barbarian is a flick that shines with potential and still manages to stand as a worthy watch for any fan of the horror genre.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 25, 2023

With Barbarian Cregger clearly knows what he’s doing with a horror film. He’s absolutely aware of the tropes and pulls the audience in, tricks them, pulls them in again, and comes up with bizarre and visceral horror.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2023

Zach Cregger's unique storytelling in the horror film will leave any viewer baffled, transforming a generic premise into a truly captivating, suspenseful, thematically rich story where the definition of a "good person" is brilliantly explored.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 25, 2023

A twisted, sadistic, hilarious, bonkers & down right insane movie

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

With stellar performances, a unique premise, a boatload of scares and horror visuals that'll be engraved into your brain for life, it's one of the best horror flicks to release this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

Horror movies are often undone with a PG-13 rating, so it can find a larger audience. For that reason alone, the R-rated "Barbarian" is something to relish.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 16, 2023

One of 2022's 20 best films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 13, 2023

If you like intense, incredible stressful horror films, this is right up your ally.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2023

I haven’t had this much fun watching a horror movie in years.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 6, 2023

Barbarian has the framings of the perfect first time horror film. Has some of the creepiest setups and executions of horror this year. This is bloody, disturbing, trippy, but at times feels very unbelievable & characters make questionable decisions during

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Jan 1, 2023

Zach Cregger’s Sam Raimi-esque film is best watched knowing nothing about it, but rest assured it will deliver on frights, laughs, and utterly brazen entertainment.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2022

Like that X-Files episode “Home,” glazed in intergenerational and gendered dread, where women are feared instead of adored.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2022

…the solution isn’t wildly imaginative, but getting there is all the fun, and if you can handle the adult themes, Barbarian should knock the stuffing out of you…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 20, 2022

The less you know about Barbarian going in the better, but know that it gives new meaning to the phrase bargain-basement.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 10, 2022

Doesn't quite stick the landing, but Barbarian's plot twists and turns make for one of the more surprising horror offerings of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2022

I was hoping for something fresh rather than freshly disturbing, but I can't argue I wasn't entertained. The formula brings nothing new to the table, but the packaging does enough to make you think it has.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 2, 2022

Like the best horrors, it's 'about' stuff -- gentrification, abuse, toxic masculinity, taking responsibility. There's also plenty of jump scares.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2022

Still, even if a few ideas and characters could be fleshed out more, Barbarian is brutal, insane, unrelenting horror film that feels offbeat and wholly original.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 30, 2022

A hilarious and enervating offer that replicates and rebuilds extremely familiar resources with enough intelligence to shape one of the great horror films of 2022.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2022

Barbarian is a bold, bonkers but ultimately frustrating horror. Where it is an unbridled success however is as an advert for never booking an Airbnb ever again!

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 13, 2022

Cast & crew
User reviews

A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems. A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems. A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.

Zach Cregger
Georgina Campbell
Bill Skarsgård
Justin Long
1.1K User reviews
254 Critic reviews
78 Metascore
5 wins & 38 nominations

(as Sophie Sorensen)

(as J.R. Esposito)

AJ's Mom

Nursing Video Narration …

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia The script started out after Zach Cregger read the Gavin de Becker's book "The Gift of Fear," which encourages women to trust their intuition when confronted by obviously dangerous men. He used it as a writing exercise and began crafting a thirty-minute short that consisted entirely of a conversation in which a woman continues to ignore a mounting series of red flags. He liked it well enough that he knew he had the makings of a longer film and began conceptualizing a broader story for the characters.
Goofs One of the characters drives an electric Nissan Leaf, bizarrely it has engine and ignition sounds dubbed over its movement.

Tess : Nope.

Crazy credits SPOILER: There are three mini-scenes after the initial smash cut to "Written & Directed by Zach Cregger" credit, showing Tess sitting up in the street, walking away from the bodies, and limping away from the water tower as dawn breaks.
Connections Featured in Chris Stuckmann Movie Reviews: Barbarian (2022)
Soundtracks Lonely at the Bar Written & Performed by Benny Reid Courtesy of Seven Seas Music

User reviews 1.1K

Sep 9, 2022
How long is Barbarian? Powered by Alexa
Why didn't Tess leave when she starts feeling uneasy?
September 9, 2022 (United States)
United States
Sofia, Bulgaria
BoulderLight Pictures
Hammerstone Studios
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$4,500,000 (estimated)
$40,842,944
$10,543,948
Sep 11, 2022
$45,352,337

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 42 minutes
Dolby Surround 7.1
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos

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‘Barbarian’ Review: Knock, Knock. Who’s There? A Ratched New Horror Classic

A simple premise involving a double-booked vacation rental gets downright demented as it goes along in Zach Cregger's unpredictable and thoroughly enjoyable debut.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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Imagine showing up for an Airbnb rental, only to discover that another guest is already there. What would you do? Check in anyway and hope for the best? Or take the mix-up as a sign and get the heck out? In “ Barbarian ,” Tess (Georgina Campbell) makes the wrong decision. It’s already late, and she decides to stay — this despite the fact that the stranger sharing the house is played by Bill Skarsgård (the actor who embodied Pennywise in the recent “It” remake). For audiences, this casting is a clue Tess is in for a scary stay. But it would be wrong to think you have “Barbarian” figured out.

Popular on Variety

That first night, Tess notices a door at the end of the hallway that seems to open by itself. The next day, against her better judgment, she opens it to discover an ominous basement untouched by whatever cozy attention their hosts put into the main house. Downstairs, there are hallways, tunnels and secret passages probably best left unexplored — not that it stops her from investigating. Around one dark corner, Tess discovers a detention room of some kind, abandoned except for a dingy cot, old camera and grimy handprint on the wall. What kind of nightmare fodder happened here? If she gets out alive, should she mention the torture chamber in her guest review?

Just as audiences are starting to feel attached to Tess and Keith, Cregger abruptly cuts to the Hollywood jerk who owns the house, AJ ( Justin Long ), smugly driving along the California coast. While on the phone with his reps, he’s suddenly hit with the thing 21st-century males seem to dread most: accusations of sexual misconduct. Everything was going great in his career, and now, faster than you can say “canceled,” all his projects are on hold. Even his manager is cutting ties. Cregger was clever to enlist Long for such a role, since the actor is enormously likable but doesn’t shy away from playing creeps (as in suspended-educator drama “After Class” or Neil LaBute’s toxic masculinity comedy “House of Darkness”).

For a time, Cregger abandons Tess’ story to focus on AJ’s arrival. The tonal shift from someone we cared about to this tool is alarming, deliberately so. Here, instead of worrying about what will become of the character, audiences may find themselves rooting for something terrible to happen. Cregger sets up all kinds of complicated feelings as AJ’s escalating douchebaggery takes the place of the smarter, subtler opening act. Rest assured, he fully intends to pay off those frustrations, bringing the two storylines together via a third — a Brian De Palma-style flashback set decades earlier, in which a predator preys on local women.

Cregger’s instinct for suspense is so effective, it’s hard to believe that before “Barbarian,” the helmer worked largely in comedy (he was a member of the Whitest Kids U’Know sketch team). Then again, a deliciously twisted sense of humor runs beneath the surface. In fact, the image of someone (or something) running beneath the surface is one of the film’s most outrageous thrills. 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.

Reviewed at Frank G. Wells Screening Room, Disney Studios, Burbank, Aug. 1, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 102 MIN.

Production: A 20th Century Studios release of a Regency Entertainment presentation, in association with Almost Never Films, Hammerstone Studios, of a Boulderlight Pictures, Vertigo Entertainment production. Producers: Arnon Milchan, Roy Lee, Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz. Executive producers: Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Natalie Lehmann, Danny Chan, Alex Lebovici, Bill Skarsgård.
Crew: Director, writer: Zach Cregger. Camera: Zach Kuperstein. Editor: Joe Murphy. Music: Anna Drubich.
With: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler, Jaymes Butler.

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The Indie Horror Film That Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About

Barbarian capitalizes on the thing viewers love and hate most: the unknown.

Bill Skarsgård peering around a door in "Barbarian"

This story contains major spoilers for Barbarian .

On the opening day of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival , one film was on everybody’s lips. As I ran into other critics around town, they kept asking, “Have you seen Barbarian yet? You’ve gotta.” That kind of chatter is typical at a festival, but the only wrinkle was that Barbarian wasn’t even playing at TIFF. It was just a small-budget horror film that had been plunked into theaters in early September, a so-called dead zone for new releases. The title is cryptic, and the trailer mostly avoids imagery from anything past the first act. Despite these hurdles, the movie became a word-of-mouth hit .

Now that it has started streaming on HBO Max, I’ve received a second wave of messages from friends who are discovering it and are floored, baffled, or simply want to compare notes. Small-scale films, unattached to any preexisting intellectual property, face significant challenges to gaining a foothold with the viewing public, so Barbarian ’s success is rare and heartening. It also speaks to a wryly intelligent selling point: The film’s story, much like its marketing, capitalizes on the simultaneous terror and appeal of the unknown.

Zach Cregger, the writer and director of Barbarian , has wittily described it as “Fincher upstairs, Raimi downstairs.” The first half is taut, high-concept storytelling that gives the audience no room to relax; the back half is a loopy, makeup-heavy monster movie. The film begins with Tess Marshall (played by Georgina Campbell) arriving one night at a Detroit Airbnb, only to find it has been double-booked: A mystery man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) is already inside. Caught in a rainstorm and anxious about a job interview she has the next morning, Tess decides to share the space. She keeps her guard up against Keith and notes several red flags in the house. Every detail is loaded with tension, including the glass of wine Keith offers her and the fact that he talks in his sleep (although he graciously insists on taking the couch and leaving her the bedroom).

Read: The people who can see inside David Fincher’s head

Cregger mines her paranoia, the unsettling feeling that something is not right even as no actual threat presents itself. Get out of there , I wanted to urge Tess during the first 30 minutes, but I also understood the predicament she was in—she doesn’t want to appear rude to Keith or dash her chances at making it to the job interview. Her decision to stay is perfectly plausible. David Fincher sets one of the highest bars for depicting creeping dread; Barbarian doesn’t quite clear it, but it certainly offers a master class in wringing frights from both graphic violence and the viewer’s own imagination. (If you don’t want to be spoiled, you should stop reading further … and go watch Barbarian .)

Georgina Campbell standing, with trepidation, at the door of her Airbnb in "Barbarian"

After her interview, Tess explores the Airbnb’s basement and unearths a hidden door to a dank tunnel, which leads to a distressing subterranean room with a mounted camcorder and a bloody bed. She wisely flees, but Keith goes exploring and vanishes. Out of some mix of altruism and curiosity, Tess looks for him and finds even deeper tunnels—and a monstrous creature prowling within them. Keith is every inch the nice guy he presented himself to be, but unfortunately, he gets his head smashed to bits right as the audience figures that out.

I’d already be on board with Barbarian if it stopped there: a nice anxiety number followed by gory chaos in the basement. But just as the violence ramps up, Cregger cuts away from the entire situation and introduces a new character, AJ Gilbride (Justin Long). An entitled Hollywood actor, AJ is cruising down the highway singing along to Donovan’s “Riki Tiki Tavi.” The lighthearted switch is perhaps more of a shock than Keith’s skull getting pulped by a superhuman beast. AJ immediately comes off as villainous in his own right: He’s a sitcom star who has been credibly accused of rape by another actor, and his response to the charge is deep denial, both outwardly and inwardly.

But his connection to the story isn’t clear until, looking to fund his legal defense, he decides to sell his extraneous properties—including a home in Detroit that is, of course, the very same Airbnb we’ve become well acquainted with. Cregger’s brilliance here is that this second horror narrative is a mirror image of the first. Tess and the viewer spend the first act of the film on the edge of their seat, wondering what awaits them around every corner of the little house. AJ barges into the same situation with complete obliviousness, eagerly measuring square footage while ignoring all warning signs, such as the empty glasses Keith and Tess left out. Essentially, this horror movie gets to have it both ways: It offers an unselfish hero (Tess) whom audiences can support, and a wincing buffoon whose inevitable comeuppance they can root for.

Eventually, AJ finds his way into the basement, Tess reemerges, and the origins of the brute in the tunnels are revealed. Barbarian laces each narrative loop with sharp social commentary. Tess’s most reckless decisions are made with the goal of helping someone; she’s not stupid, merely noble, which infuses her arc with a sad vulnerability. Although the monster is the biggest physical threat in the film, AJ represents a vile, cowardly rot—the kind Cregger has likely noticed in powerful men in his industry.

The film never underlines who the titular barbarian is, but part of the fun is deciding for yourself where to pin that label. Plenty of horror movies are roller-coaster rides that drop us off after 90 minutes with little else beyond the message “Monsters are scary.” Barbarian serves up all the requisite thrills with panache, but it also provokes deeper, longer-lasting reflections. That balance is why the film has continued spreading so organically months after its release, and why it’ll keep tempting viewers down to the basement for years to come.

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Critic’s Pick

‘Barbarian’ Review: This Rental Is Hell

Two strangers explore the basement of their Detroit rental home in this gleefully twisty horror movie by Zach Cregger.

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By Beatrice Loayza

“Barbarian,” a gleefully twisty horror movie by the writer-director Zach Cregger, is both a product of modern times and something of a throwback.

Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgard) meet-cute when they turn out to be the victims of a double booking scam, deciding, against the smitten Tess’s better instincts, to share the rental. The house, decked out in furniture straight out of West Elm, would seem innocuous enough, but it’s also located in the middle of an abandoned, post-apocalyptic-looking Detroit neighborhood whose only apparent inhabitant is an unhinged homeless man who terrorizes the streets.

As expected from this kind of haunted-house thriller, the doors seem to open and close on their own, leading Tess to the one place any horror buff will know means trouble: the basement, where hidden passageways multiply and abominable crimes make themselves known.

Cregger sets up dozens of clichés and pulls them in genuinely surprising directions, brandishing his touchstones: American horror films of the 80s and 90s in the vein of Wes Craven. The scares are tempered by a comic punching bag courtesy of Justin Long as a sleazy Hollywood director who pays a visit to his Detroit property after sexual assault charges drain his bank account.

Cregger isn’t as concerned with making bold political points as he is with orchestrating a snappy spectacle that goes a mile a minute. #MeToo, gentrification, the brutal underbelly of the Reagan era — all these elements fit like puzzle pieces into a broader nightmare that lets the context speak for itself. “Barbarian” is all the more creepy — and fun — because of it.

Barbarian Rated R for nudity, bloodshed and suggestion of rape. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

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Georgina Campbell (Tess) Bill Skarsgård (Keith) Justin Long (AJ) Matthew Patrick Davis (The Mother) Richard Brake (Frank) Kurt Braunohler (Doug) Jaymes Butler (Andre) Sophie Sörensen (Bonnie) Rachel Fowler (Meg) JR Esposito (Jeff)

Zach Cregger

A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.

<i>Barbarian </i>bashes ahead with a brilliant new vision of horror

Barbarian bashes ahead with a brilliant new vision of horror

Zach Cregger's story of an Airbnb mix-up serves up some must-see white knuckle mysteries

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More about Barbarian

Justin Long promises <i>Barbarian</i> audiences will be "rooting for bad things to happen to me"

Justin Long promises Barbarian audiences will be "rooting for bad things to happen to me"

We're not trying to spoil anything, but let’s just say fans of Long’s work in Jeepers Creepers should check out this …

Surprise: something spooky is going on with Bill Skarsgård in the <i>Barbarian</i> trailer

Surprise: something spooky is going on with Bill Skarsgård in the Barbarian trailer

Georgina Campbell and Justin Long also star in the new horror thriller

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Barbarian’s layered secrets make it horror-movie catnip

The fall’s first buzzy horror film offers more than just twists

Tess climbs out of the darkness, terrified in the new movie Barbarian.

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Share All sharing options for: Barbarian’s layered secrets make it horror-movie catnip

The horror movie Barbarian is best approached by an audience that knows as little as possible about it. The film’s trailer encourages this to a degree that may turn some viewers off: It divulges little beyond the film’s initial setup. Even in our spoiler-phobic times, keeping secrets makes sense for a horror movie — it’s simply scarier if viewers don’t know what’s coming. But the true test of a well-constructed movie comes when there are no surprises left. At the end of its 102-minute run time, with its secrets laid bare, Barbarian still has so much to offer. And part of that is something for viewers to be scared of beyond its initial ominous portrait of the quiet terror that can lurk inside a house when two strangers are forced together on a dark and stormy night.

Written and directed by Zach Cregger (formerly of the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U’ Know), Barbarian starts off simple enough. Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb in the outskirts of Detroit, where she discovers it’s been double-booked and that a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) is already staying there. Stuck in a storm with no other options readily available and an important job interview in the morning, Tess makes the risky decision to stay the night.

[ Ed note: While this review preserves most of the movie’s surprises, some minor setup spoilers follow .]

Tess is a great modern horror-movie protagonist — doe-eyed but not naive, a guarded but kind young woman who just wants to land a good job and go back to wherever she’s from. Her bad decisions — the kind every horror protagonist has to make, from staying in the house to exploring its depths — mostly stem from her kindness and wanting to believe the best about others.

Keith peeking out of an open door in the horror movie Barbarian

Keith, to his credit, is aware of how all this looks. He’s savvy enough to know that Tess has no reason to trust him, and every reason to expect the worst. And he tries to ameliorate that awareness by going out of his way to make sure she’s as comfortable as she can be. There’s nothing he can really do, though; the weight and history of too many women threatened by too many men hangs heavy in a situation like this, and casts a shadow over Barbarian as a whole. Even as Keith continually attempts to put Tess at ease, she — and the audience — can never really trust him. (Even if Skarsgård sans makeup isn’t recognizable as the man who played Pennywise in the recent It movies , the unsettling energy is still there, and put to good use.)

This is where Barbarian begins: as a suspenseful tale about two strangers forced to ride out a storm together, told from the perspective of a woman who must constantly worry whether the man she’s sharing a house with is dangerous. Even with the modern Airbnb spin, this is classic horror-movie stuff, enough to support a quick-and-dirty exploitation film. But Cregger merely uses the premise as a foundation for something more ambitious, delivering a lean, surprising film with effective thrills, while also giving viewers plenty to contemplate afterward.

No filmmaker makes any decision lightly, but every creative choice made in Barbarian is astoundingly well-calibrated in a way that rewards close watching, while also not detracting from a more casual, thrill-seeking experience. From its Detroit setting — initially arbitrary, but eventually given reasons beyond aesthetic decay — to the sharing-economy snafu that gives the film its initial premise, there’s a methodical execution of setup and subversion that’s just subtle enough to shift away from what viewers might expect. Still, it’s never so dramatic that Barbarian ends in a wildly different place from where it began.

Tess stands atop a staircase leading to a dark basement in the horror movie Barbarian.

That’s the film’s greatest strength: For all its twists and turns, Barbarian is more a movie about recontextualizing what’s on screen than about big reveals. Its script never calls attention to that dynamic, but it is constantly toying with viewer sympathies. It quietly poses questions, goading the audience into defending their assumptions at every turn. Is Tess in danger from Keith? Are they both in danger from the house? If they are, whose fault is that? Does it matter whether you think they’re good people? Is your gendered view of the world warping your perception?

Barbarian ’s visual simplicity gives the mind freedom to wander. The Airbnb home Tess and Keith are in is dingy and dimly lit. With a little grace and imagination, the house doesn’t even look that bad — but why would anyone watching a horror film be that gracious? Especially when presented with the familiar iconography it hides, from a seemingly endless dark tunnel to a rooms that looks like something horrible happened there.

These are familiar images, and Barbarian uses them as fuel for speculation that fills the first viewing with dread, and orients further viewings around the characters. While Tess, Keith, and the few others they encounter are archetypal, they aren’t blank slates in a nondescript nightmare town. They’re characters visiting Detroit for a reason, and the history of that city — and its late-20th-century turn toward decay, as it was abandoned by a wealthy white community that could no longer mold it to their idyllic middle-class vision — is an unspoken weight on the film and its horror. Like Skarsgård and Campbell, who deftly convey quiet shifts in the energy of a scene with the smallest facial expressions, Cregger’s camera reminds viewers of Barbarian ’s setting with small, careful shifts, gesturing at the whole of a place by carefully regarding a narrow slice.

This is where Barbarian transcends its secrets. Twisty stories are hard to calibrate for; knowing a film has one or more hard left turns coming can goose expectations, which are often rooted more in what any given viewer wants, not in the storytellers’ ultimate goals. Barbarian ’s shifts, fortunately, are subtler and scarier. As the film sinks deeper into the house it begins in, its best trick is one of the oldest in cinema. Cregger makes sure the biggest scares are in your head, and in what you might learn about where your sympathies ultimately lie.

Barbarian debuts in theaters on Sept. 9.

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‘Barbarian’ review: Breaking the rules of horror in brilliant fashion

Movie review.

Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t go into the basement. Don’t go inside secret dark and underground passageways inside the basement.

Bad things happen when these basic horror movie safety rules are broken.

But “Barbarian” — a must-watch for fans of “Black Mirror” and “The Twilight Zone” — may not be what you’d expect.

The brilliance of “Barbarian” is in director/writer Zach Cregger’s engrossing, twisted, absurd and genre-bending script. It starts with what could have become a funny story or the beginnings of a meet-cute and ends with the eyes of evil and social commentary on what makes a monster.

It’s a dark and rainy night in Detroit and Tess Marshall’s (Georgina Campbell) Airbnb is double booked. No key in the lockbox. No answer when calling the owners of the Airbnb. Stranger Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgård), who is renting the same one-story, single-bedroom house on 476 Barbary, answers the door.

Tess knows she shouldn’t go inside a house occupied by a man she doesn’t know. She knows she shouldn’t sleep inside a house occupied by a man she doesn’t know. Tess is smart and resourceful. But it’s pouring. No other hotel rooms are available. She needs a place to sleep before a job interview with a documentary filmmaker. What would you do?

“Barbarian” is skillfully directed, smartly cast and superbly acted. Skarsgård is famously known for playing the monster Pennywise the clown in the movie remakes of Stephen King’s “It.” You can’t help but think:

“Do I look like some kind of monster?” asks Skarsgård, who delivers a wonderfully endearing, rambling and disarming monologue about why he waited to open a bottle of wine.

Skarsgård and Campbell have great chemistry together. For a moment, you wonder if their characters could become more than strangers. Then you remember that their stories exist within the confines of a horror movie.

Justin Long, who plays actor AJ Gilbride (the less you know about his character and how he ties into the story, the better), embodies someone you’d love to punch in the face. His performance interjects comedy under terrifying situations.

Meanwhile, Campbell is vulnerable but capable as the film’s heroine and damsel. She’s someone audiences can easily root for and become attached to. You don’t question her intelligence even as Cregger’s screenplay forces Tess to break key “stranger danger” survival rules — slowly leading and trapping her inside an underground maze full of secrets and horrors.

“Barbarian” systematically rationalizes questionable character decisions, dismantling defenses with logic, an appeal to humanity and the promise of unearthing mysteries. Bible stories and fairy tales have taught us not to eat apples because they might be poisoned, but Cregger is the snake luring Tess and the viewers to step away from the safety of the garden of Eden and to take a bite from an apple growing from the tree of knowledge.

Bad things will happen. We can step away from the danger. But we don’t. “Barbarian” and the house on Barbary operates like a Pandora’s box we can’t help but open.

With Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long. Directed by Zach Cregger. 102 minutes. R for violence, gore, nudity, language and disturbing material. Opens Sept. 9 at multiple theaters.

Barbarian Is the Smartest, Funniest Horror Movie in Ages

Score one for un-elevated horror..

For a certain kind of movie, the greatest tribute you can pay is not being able to sit through to the end. At least, that’s what I like to think the two people who sprinted out of my screening of Barbarian on Friday night were trying to express by their abrupt exit. I’d like to tell you exactly what it was in this tense and twisted movie that might have prompted them to head for the doors, but I was a too busy suppressing the fight-or-flight instinct myself.

Barbarian topped the box office when it opened in early September, which isn’t unusual for horror movies, whose fans tend to turn out in droves and then vanish almost as quickly. But it’s since defied conventional wisdom by holding onto its audience. Last weekend, it actually added 550 screens . And having seen it with a crowd, albeit one that was two people smaller by the time the credits rolled, it’s easy to see why.

Written and directed by Zach Cregger, Barbarian is a prime example of what you might call un-elevated horror. Where some directors and studios have used the “ elevated horror ” label to market scary movies like Get Out and The Witch to people who wouldn’t ordinarily be caught dead in one, Cregger’s movie revels in the genre’s stock elements: a spooky house on a deserted street, doors that open and close of their own accord, a woman standing at the top of a rough-hewn staircase that descends into inky darkness, shakily asking, “Hello?”

Barbarian doesn’t feel the need to signal that it’s better than genre clichés by constantly winking at them, nor does it deploy them with the punishing determination of David Gordon Green’s Halloween movies. But Cregger has thought about why they work, and he keeps paying them off in unexpected ways. When Tess (Georgina Campbell) turns up at a short-term rental in a particularly bombed-out section of Detroit only to find it’s already occupied by a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård), alarm bells immediately start ringing, and his jittery attempts to set her at ease only make matters worse. She surreptitiously snaps a picture of his driver’s license, and you keep waiting for the moment when she’ll plug his name or likeness into a search engine and find out that he’s an escaped serial killer. But instead she just gazes at it fondly, zooming in on her iPhone to get a better look at his face, and though when she returns to the rental home in daylight, she realizes the neighborhood is much worse than she thought—theirs appears to be the only house within miles that isn’t crumbling entirely to ruin—she sticks around anyway. The movie justifies this vaguely, with a tossed-off line about how every room in town is booked because of some convention or other, but of course the real reason Tess stays is that the movie requires it, and because we want her to.

Barbarian ’s script thinks through its problems as much as it needs to, and no more: It knows that horror and logic are enemies at heart, and the trick is to make us desire the knowledge of what’s behind that door more than we care why it’s opened. Its best trick is that there’s more than one door. ( Spoilers for Barbarian follow .) When Tess gets stuck in the house’s basement—the door locks from the outside because whatever, it just does—she finds a hidden passageway that leads to a windowless room containing a filthy mattress and a video camera, along with a bloody handprint smeared on the wall. Not long after, she realizes there’s a hidden door behind that hidden door, that one leading to a rough-hewn staircase leading down into the earth. Eventually, we realize there’s another door beyond that one, too. But the movie’s real trap doors aren’t physical but structural. Tess starts descending those stairs about 40 minutes into the movie, and the farther down she goes, the more unbelievable it seems that there’s nearly an hour to go. But just as an unholy figure rushes out of the darkness at her, the movie cuts away, and suddenly we’re in another time and place, watching a callow young TV star, AJ (Justin Long) drive his convertible down the California coast.

Naturally, AJ’s story winds its way back to Tess’s. That neatly kept house in an otherwise abandoned neighborhood turns out to belong to him, an ill-advised real estate investment that becomes his only asset after his career abruptly collapses. AJ too makes his way down to the basement, albeit with the brash cocksureness of a man too dim to conceive of anything he can’t handle, and soon both of them are trapped in a cage and the story seems to be at another dead end. But Cregger cuts away yet again, this time searing our eyeballs—by now well-adjusted to dimly lit interiors and Stygian pits—with the incandescent green of heavily fertilized lawns and brightly painted houses. Because there are no cues to orient us, it takes a while to determine where we are, until we realize the question isn’t where, but when. We’re back on the same street some 40 years earlier, before white flight gutted the neighborhood and left it a shell of itself. (The fact that both versions of the street were constructed from scratch in Bulgaria adds to the feeling of synthetic displacement.) Reagan’s economy is sending the markets into a downturn, and his neighbor apologetically tells the gruff, affectless Frank (Richard Brake) that he’s about to put his house on the market. But Frank vows that he isn’t going anywhere, and having seen the future, we know how true that is. Frank goes shopping for “baby stuff,” and we watch him stalk a woman to her house, slipping into a utility worker’s coveralls and surreptitiously opening the lock on her bathroom window before making his way out. If you’re up on your Netflix serial killer series, you know what happens next.

Or maybe you don’t. Because Frank isn’t just murdering women, or imprisoning them and forcing them to bear his children. He’s doing that and forcing those children to have children with each other, and then forcing those children to etc. We don’t see any evidence of this, fortunately, beyond a stack of videocassettes with labels like “puker” and “gas station redhead,” but the product of these concentric circles of incestuous rape is what’s stalking the house’s subterranean tunnels, a mutated woman obsessed with making visitors her “babies” and yet strong enough to rip a man in two. (That is not a figure of speech.) Generations of retreat from the outside world has produced something truly monstrous—exactly how many generations fit into 40 years is not an equation you’re meant to solve—but the outside world isn’t much better. This corner of Detroit has been left to rot, and the authorities have their hands full making sure the rest of the city doesn’t go the same way. Horror movies love finding ways to disable their protagonists’ cellphones , but Barbarian doesn’t have to, because when Tess calls the cops, they don’t come, and when they eventually do come, they don’t help.

Before Barbarian , Cregger was best known as a member of the sketch comedy troupe the Whitest Kids U’ Know. As the career of Jordan Peele has demonstrated, there’s a lot of crossover between comedy and horror, the genres most dependent on technique and timing: Either a gag or a scare can be ruined if it’s off by a fraction of a second. But even more than Peele, Cregger does both at once. Barbarian isn’t horror-comedy, but it makes you laugh at its audaciousness, as well as, sometimes, to keep yourself from screaming. (There’s also a sequence involving Long’s character and a tape measure that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all year.) Especially as it nears its climax, the movie leans into its own absurdity, building to a final act that is, quite deliberately, more silly than it is scary.

It’s also (and I’ve saved this for last so as not to frighten anyone off) quite smart. Barbarian doesn’t have an overriding thesis or big statement to make, because its intelligence is intuitive rather than programmatic. You can make what you like of the fact that Tess, who is Black, has come to Detroit to interview for a job with a white documentary filmmaker whose latest movie is about jazz; that the only other significant Black character in the movie is a homeless man who drags her out of the basement and warns her not to go back to that “bad place”; that AJ is a gentrifier as well as an accused rapist. The subtext—about racism and urban renewal, toxic masculinity, Reagan-era paranoia and its ramifications in the present day—stays subtext, there to be mined by those who don’t mind making ever-so-slight fools of themselves. (The copy of Jane Eyre conspicuously placed in Tess’ luggage can stay just where it is, thanks.) Fortunately, you don’t have to dig under its surface to think Barbarian ’s a blast.

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‘barbarian’ review: a gleefully gonzo horror flick.

A young woman gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to share a rental house in Zach Cregger's horror film.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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‘Barbarian’ explained: Unpacking all the twists and the real villain in Airbnb horror

A woman looks terrified in the horror film "Barbarian."

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Warning: This article discusses spoilers for the twisty new horror film “Barbarian.” If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our nonspoilery review here and more with the cast and director here .

That one-word title looms large over “ Barbarian ,” one of the most delightfully twisted horror films of 2022, in which a woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) stumbles into a nightmare when she finds her rental house already occupied by a stranger.

It’s a roller-coaster horror ride filled with suspense, scares, surprising laughs and some of the most delicious cinematic twists since last year’s “Malignant.”

What Tess discovers in the basement leads her into a labyrinth of unimaginable horrors — some closer than you might think. But who’s the real monster in filmmaker Zach Cregger’s Airbnb-of-horrors solo feature debut ?

The nice guy and the meet-cute from hell

At first, signs point to said handsome stranger, Keith (“It” star Bill Skarsgard, also an executive producer, cannily playing off his Pennywise persona), who turns up the charm to get Tess to lower her guard and spend the night, else brave the storm outside. After a few nice gestures and good conversation, she ignores her instincts and says yes — even as Cregger’s script and Skarsgard’s delivery create a sizzling ambiguity around Keith’s motivations.

“My only note to Bill [Skarsgard] was, ‘Don’t lean into creepy. Lean into nice,’” Cregger said. “The nicer you are and the more disarming and friendly and appealing and nonthreatening that you behave, the more the audience is going to be convinced that you’re bad.”

Inspired in part by security expert Gavin de Becker’s book “The Gift of Fear,” “Barbarian” conjures a minefield of misogynist red flags for its heroine to navigate even before she crosses paths with shouting local Andre (Jaymes Butler), sitcom actor AJ (Justin Long) and a violent tunnel dweller known as the Mother (played expressively by Matthew Patrick Davis).

A young woman uses the flashlight on her cellphone to illuminate a dark area

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Writer-director Zach Cregger delivers a fresh genre surprise in the cult movie in waiting ‘Barbarian.’

Sept. 7, 2022

“[Keith] insists on bringing her luggage in, he makes her tea that she said she didn’t want, he says, ‘Pretty name,’” said Cregger. “These are not appropriate things to be doing in this situation. But he’s not aware of it, because he thinks he’s being nice.”

Is there something more sinister about Keith that Tess can’t see? Does it have anything to do with the doors that open and close in the middle of the night? The question hangs in the air as Tess makes a series of chilling discoveries in the basement, where a hidden door leads to a shadowy hallway and a secret room where very bad things have clearly occurred.

Beyond lies yet another door leading to the subterranean lair of the film’s apparent titular monster — the volatile Mother.

A woman holds a flashlight at the top of a staircase.

The mother under the stairs

“She was described as being 7 feet tall, naked, her face looking like it was the product of inbreeding, and having an impossible strength,” said Davis, the 6-foot-8-inch actor and musician behind the most surprising character in “Barbarian.” He was cast after a Zoom audition in which he stripped to his underwear and mimicked biting the head off a rat with a pickle he found in his fridge.

“ I was very aware that this could be funny in the right way or the wrong way,” Davis said of his “Barbarian” performance. “When you’re in it, you have no idea how it’s going to be perceived. You’re aware that it’s a big swing and that it is bonkers and that, you know, you’re sitting there naked in Bulgaria with boobs taped to your chest. Are people going to buy this?”

Before filming began last summer, he received advice from legendary creature performer Doug Jones , including the fine line between physical expression and nonverbal overacting and another handy pro tip: Get prescription creature contacts made, else risk biting it while chasing your co-stars through those dark tunnels.

You’re sitting there naked in Bulgaria with boobs taped to your chest. Are people going to buy this?

— “Barbarian” star Matthew Patrick Davis

But Mother’s backstory is also the film’s most tragic. To inform her emotional state, Davis studied profiles of feral children and adults, diving deep into “a dark, disturbing YouTube rabbit hole” of research. As he sat in a chair for three hours getting into prosthetics and makeup each day, he watched the videos to prepare.

“It opened me up to the reality of the lives of people that have been deeply abused, raised in cages, raised like animals, kept in the dark and never spoken to in their formative years,” he said. “It allowed me to have empathy for this character. This is not just a scary character for scariness’ sake. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that she’s a victim.”

“I think that she’s the most empathetic character in the movie. She has never had a chance,” echoes Cregger, who also credits Davis with inspiring him to write certain gestures into Mother’s well-worn maternity VHS tape, which come full circle in the film’s bittersweet final scene. “And Matthew plays it with such tenderness.”

Zach Cregger, actor Georgina Chapman and actor Justin Long from the movie Barbarian

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The sins of the father

After introducing Mother, the textbook horror movie monster we expect, Cregger challenges us throughout the film to reconsider who the actual barbarian of the story is. First seen in a Reagan-era flashback, Frank (Richard Brake, who starred recently in Amazon’s “Bingo Hell” and killed Bruce Wayne’s parents in “Batman Begins”) is her inverse — an average suburban family man on the outside and a true monster within.

Borrowing from serial killer films “Angst” (1983) and “Elephant” (both Gus Van Sant’s 2003 feature and the 1983 Alan Clark short of the same name), Cregger builds unease as the camera follows Frank to the store, where he stocks up on a suspicious grocery list, and as he stalks a young woman to her home.

It is revealed that he has kidnapped, raped and impregnated several women in the secret chambers beneath his house without repercussions for decades, and that Mother is the daughter of another of his victims, born into miserable captivity.

But it’s telling that it’s not Tess who learns Frank’s horrible truth in the film. Instead, it’s AJ (Long, playing deftly against type) whoruns from Mother to a section of the tunnels where even she dares not follow.

Enter the Hollywood actor

Introduced cruising carefree down Pacific Coast Highway singing along to Donovan’s “Riki Tiki Tavi,” the narcissistic Hollywood star has recently stepped into his own version of a nightmare: an accusation of sexual assault that threatens to unravel his successful career.

“Because I’m an actor, and I know the world of actors very well, I was writing from an amalgam of people in my life,” Cregger said of conceiving the character of AJ. “I was trying to think of, ‘What’s this guy’s horror movie?’ Before he gets into the real horror movie — what’s the horror movie that he thinks he’s in? The collapse of your career and reputation due to your own bad behavior. This guy thinks his world is ending.”

AJ, who at first appears to be a ridiculous comedic figure, is revealed to be arguably the scariest character in the film. In Detroit to liquidate his rental home to cover his impending legal fees, he is the embodiment of male privilege and casual misogyny, his puffed-up bravado masking an inherent cowardice and refusal to take accountability for his actions. (Although not explicitly addressed in the film, Cregger says he deliberately wrote the men of “Barbarian” to be white males.)

When AJ discovers the ailing Frank and judges him by his brutal crimes, the audience is invited to wonder: Just how different is he from the monster staring back at him?

Frank, at least, seems to know he can’t escape what he’s done. AJ’s brief moment of clarity reverts to gaslighting self-preservation as he commits one final heinous act, attempting to hide his true nature behind a well-practiced nice guy veneer — a quality Long borrowed from watching men deliver empty apologies on “The Bachelorette.”

“There’s a glimmer of accountability,” said Long, “and I just love that Zach refuses to take the conventional way out.”

As for Tess, it’s her innate sense of empathy — the one that repeatedly sends her toward danger to help others, at her own peril — that helps her understand Mother before she sets them both free. “She’s someone that is used to traumatic situations and is able to understand how to survive in this situation,” said Campbell. “By the end of the film, I feel like she gets her own agency and is able to get out of the pattern she found herself in again and again and again.”

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‘Barbarian’ Review – Violent, Ruthless Crowd-Pleaser Makes for One of the Year’s Biggest Surprises

Bloody Disgusting’s Barbarian review is spoiler-free.

Meet one of horror’s biggest, most savage surprises of the year. Writer/Director Zach Cregger (“The Whitest Kids U’ Know”) eschews conventions in Barbarian to keep audiences on edge, making for one of the most delightfully unhinged viewing experiences in recent memory. A simple rental nightmare set up an intense pressure cooker scenario with no limits to the midnight madness.

Tess ( Georgina Campbell ) arrives at her Detroit rental late at night during a torrential downpour. The rain distracts her from the subtle signs that a quiet night before her big job interview won’t go as planned. The keys, for one, aren’t in the lockbox. When a man, Keith ( Bill Skarsgård ), answers the door, the strangers realize the place has been double booked. Tess, out of options, agrees to share the space but remains guarded. As Keith soothes her apprehension, Tess realizes the danger has just begun.

Cregger creates an unrelenting unease from the outset. Everything about Tess’s situation screams trouble, but Cregger consistently traps his protagonist in place, leaving her with nowhere to go but forward. The torrential downpour combined with lockbox woes leaves her with only the briefest moment to register just how quiet the street is after dark. A popular conference taking place during her stay leaves her with no alternatives, either. Cregger rips away every possible chance dangled in front of Tess to escape the inevitable terror. More than leaving you on edge, it breeds mistrust while you wait for the threat to reveal itself.

Even that reveal is a measured escalation, a steady ramp-up from dread to full-blown sensory assault. It’s far from over. Cregger expertly crafts an unwavering unpredictability by forgoing a traditional narrative structure. The first act feels like a self-contained full feature before the rug gets pulled and new layers add to the deranged equation. And it builds. And builds.

At its core, Barbarian presents two sides of the same coin reacting to one hellish scenario. From it, it unleashes one sadistic and gruesome horror thriller unafraid to be as biting with its pitch-black humor as its horror. While there’s an interesting commentary to be mined from how Tess reacts and handles certain situations versus some of the supporting characters as unlucky as she, the emphasis remains on ensuring a full-throttle onslaught of nail-biting terror. No one is safe from the madness, and it’s brutal.

Campbell deftly retains audience allegiances even as her character defies all horror logic, sometimes by choice. A fortitude at odds with vulnerability keeps you invested in Tess and consistently unsure if she’s survivor material. That thread of uncertainty runs through every central character. Bill Skarsgård charms as Keith but creates enough doubt to raise suspicion. Justin Long’s AJ disarms with an affability that belies his denial and obstinate self-preservation. The arcs are as robust and compelling as the deeply flawed characters deserve. Authenticity grounds them even as the world around them crumbles into abject fear, darkness, and insanity.

Barbarian demands to be seen with a crowd. Creggers makes keen observations about humanity at their best and worst, then creates a visceral horror movie from them. All rules get tossed out the window, resulting in a confrontational and chilling feature that slams into you like a freight train and leaves you breathless. It’s smartly written, well crafted, and boasts a fantastic cast committed to the insanity. More importantly, it’s the type of violent, ruthless, and bloody horror that leaves a mark.

Barbarian releases in theaters on September 9, 2022.

[Related] Zach Cregger on Horror Influences and Mixing Terror with Comedy [Interview]

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Co-Host of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest.

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clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

‘Barbarian’ turns paint-by-number horror elements into something more

Zach Cregger’s twisty, clever script elevates this story about a double-booked Airbnb

“Barbarian” has a typical horror movie setup. Tess (Georgina Campbell) is in Detroit for a job interview. On a dark and stormy night, she arrives at her Airbnb, but somebody else is already there. Keith (Bill Skarsgard), who rented the house from a different service, tries to be helpful, but he’s awkward and a little creepy. He suggests they both spend the night there. 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”?

But “Barbarian” does something unusual. Writer-director Zach Cregger’s script takes these various paint-by-number horror elements — a vulnerable debutante, an unfamiliar house, a hidden room — and colors outside the lines.

Cregger, who was born in Arlington, is part of the comedy troupe the Whitest Kids U’Know . But while “Barbarian” is dryly funny, his foray into fright isn’t exactly a horror comedy, and that’s a good thing.

Winding through as many twists as there are secret passages in the basement, the script is more than just clever — it’s intelligent, and its characters, for the most part, are more emotionally shaded than usual. They don’t behave the way horror victims are supposed to act; when Tess first discovers a secret passage, she doesn’t immediately enter it. “Nope!” she tells herself, though her tune changes, if only out of necessity. This is a film that respects its audience; instead of over-explaining every turn, Cregger places enough clues so you can figure it out yourself.

Cinematographer Zach Kuperstein works with Cregger to immerse us in this spooky living space. The house, which is in a rough part of Detroit (the city’s long decline and attempted resurgence are part of the plot), is the most dangerous place in the movie, and we get to know its layout, from the plain, utilitarian furnishings to the horrifying (and perhaps biologically symbolic) underground passages. It becomes so familiar that when the action calls for a change of venue, it’s unsettling since we no longer know where we are. That which scares us is exactly what draws us in — like a typical horror character, we want to see what’s in those hidden spaces.

The cast sells the film’s tangled conceit. Campbell takes what seems like a run-of-the-mill woman in distress and invests her with not just toughness but maturity. Skarsgard plays his part with the right level of ambiguity; he seems sensitive but shifty enough for us to wonder whether he’s the eponymous brute. And it would be a spoiler to explain how Justin Long’s character is dragged into this hell: On one level, he’s a mustache-twirling cartoon villain — all the better to root for his demise — but he’s given a chance to break out of his glib arrogance.

In the end, one wonders who the barbarian really is. Is it Detroit? Is it America? Is it us? Through its parade of screams, “Barbarian” asks an important question: Can we trust anyone to keep an eye out for us — parents, law enforcement — or do we need to learn to fend for ourselves?

R. At area theaters. Contains some strong violence and gore, disturbing images, strong language throughout and nudity. 102 minutes.

Barbarian Review

28 Oct 2022

Barbarian is best experienced with little foreknowledge. Writer-director Zach Cregger packs his first horror outing with the same twists and turns as are found in the bizarre sketches of his TV comedy troupe, The Whitest Kids U’ Know . Where a typical WKUK segment stretched and contorted its joke far past the point of absurdity, so too does Barbarian , with its tale of a homestay in a ravaged Detroit suburb which might be housing something sinister. When the story begins, a torrential downpour forces Tess (Georgina Campbell) to spend the evening with Keith ( Bill Skarsgård ), a mysterious tenant who supposedly double-booked her Airbnb.

Tess seems to be running away from someone who once hurt her, and Keith doles out his own advice on the topic — over a bottle of wine he seems adamant on opening. But as her stay wears on, Tess finds herself facing an increasingly disturbing scenario.

Cregger maintains a gripping intensity, while piling up surprises and cranking up aesthetic and spatial absurdities in the process.

Who owns this fancy house? What secrets are hidden behind its walls? These and many other questions are answered in wildly unexpected fashion. Cregger maintains a gripping intensity, while piling up surprises and cranking up aesthetic and spatial absurdities in the process. The movie’s daring swings, however, remain rooted in surprisingly thoughtful themes, from urban decay to the thorny nature of toxic relationships.

A tricky film to advertise without revealing its conceit — even its distributors have largely avoided disclosing the nature of Justin Long ’s role — Barbarian plays like a midnight festival darling, bucking expectations while maintaining artistic finesse. Everything from the music cues (from composer Anna Drubich) to its lens choices (courtesy of cinematographer Zach Kuperstein) serves the gear-shifts, which transform it from a run-of-the-mill spooky-house saga into a beguiling, borderline stream-of-consciousness romp.

The film’s rapid swinging between styles can be distancing at times, with shifts in narrative focus that often arrive just when the tension begins to crescendo. But these mildly jarring resets are part and parcel of the film’s devious game of tonal hopscotch, and Cregger knows exactly how and when to twist each screw, reminding the viewer how funny, intense and disturbing a movie can be, all at the same time.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

The horror movie trope about how you shouldn’t build housing tracts on indigenous lands used to be considered a mildly progressive one. Nowadays it looks a little patronizing, to say the least. And given that recent developments in historical interpretation have revealed that, to put it in simplistically blunt terms, all land is in some form indigenous, the trope seems narrow as well. (This is one of the reasons, indirectly, that Jordan Peele ’s “ Us ” felt like something new.)

In any event, when “Barbarians” opens with a promotional video in which Tom Cullen ’s Lucas, an instantly smarmy beardo, touts a new idyllic community at a site in rural England called “Gaeta” (the Gallic word for "gateway"), one arches an eyebrow a little. And perhaps one also asks, “And where are they now, the little people of Stonehenge?” One supposes it’s at least commendable that “Barbarians,” a horror movie that aspires to stress you out early-Ben-Wheatley style, albeit under the direction of Charles Dorfman instead, doesn’t quite go to that obvious place.

In spite of a couple of intimations of the supernatural, which involve a fox and are quickly dropped, the film’s conflicts stay earthbound, and as the title suggests, are engineered to make Points About How Despite The Veneer Of Civilization Modern Man Remains To Some Extent In A Primordial State. Lucas’ opening video pitch is disrupted by a shot of Lucas in a dark place, his forehead covered in blood, wrapping up his pitch. Um-hmm.

We are then introduced to Adam ( Iwan Rheon ) and Eva ( Catalina Sandino Moreno ), who are apparently the first residents in the lovely Gateway development. They’ve earned the house in exchange for creative services they’ve rendered unto Lucas, or so they believe. At a dinner party later that evening, Lucas will try to welch on the deal. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a beautiful morning at the house, and it’s Adam’s birthday, and he goes out for a run, where he encounters a dead fox. Which then turns up inside the couple’s kitchen. Which makes Adam fretful. A neighbor of sorts helps clean it up. But Eva is exasperated by Adam’s waffling.

Adam has some troubles with his conscience, too. He Googles himself, and down that rabbit hole, he reads news stories about Lucas and the development, and how a former partner of Lucas, who owned the land on which this lovely house was built, died of a heart attack soon after initiating a lawsuit against Lucas.

So the stage is set for an uneasy dinner. Lucas shows up with girlfriend Chloe ( Inès Spiridonov ), a young artist who’s also an ardent admirer of Eva’s. Everyone seems to enjoy busting on Adam. He announces the topic of his latest creative project, about a “prehistoric man in the modern world,” and the entire table explodes in mirth, citing Brendan Fraser and “Encino Man,” which apparently was titled “California Man” in the U.K. As Adam and Lucas exchange toxic banter, one is inclined to wonder whether Adam is EVEN a Beta male.

But wait. Adam gets tetchy when word slips out that Chloe is pregnant, and he confronts her when she visits the bathroom. These two have a past, apparently, but Chloe instructs him that “it never happened.”

And then the home invasion happens. If you’ve been paying attention, the subsequent “revelations” will come as no surprise, and the plot turns will bear out why the characters have the names Dorfman has given them. The director carries out his ultimately banal aims with commendable dispatch, and it’s always interesting to see Moreno play a character who’s not a living saint (she’s done it before, I know, but I’ve not seen it too often myself). But as an individual who’s not likely to have his dream house handed to him anytime soon under any circumstances, shady or not, I couldn’t relate.

Now playing in select theaters and available on digital platforms.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Barbarians (2022)

Tom Cullen as Lucas

Inès Spiridonov as Chloe

Iwan Rheon as Adam

Catalina Sandino Moreno as Eva

Connor Swindells as Dan

Tommy McDonnell as Neil

Will Kemp as John

Kevin Ryan as Alan Wickes

Charles Dorfman

Writer (story by)

Statten Roeg

Cinematographer

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Tommy Boulding
Marc Canham

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Sam Raimi names a horror movie with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score as his favorite recently released film

The Evil Dead director is a big fan of Barbarian

Sam Raimi has revealed his favorite recently released movie – and it's a horror film from 2022.

"I thought Barbarian was great," Raimi said during an appearance at WonderCon when asked if he'd enjoyed any recently released movies. "That one was fantastic."

The movie, directed by Zach Cregger, follows Tess (Georgina Campbell), a woman staying in a Detroit Airbnb while she visits the city for a job interview. When she arrives, she finds that the property has been double booked – but that turns out to be the least of her problems when she discovers what lurks in the basement… Bill Skarsgård plays Tess' fellow guest, while Justin Long plays a disgraced actor and the owner of the Airbnb. Barbarian was a hit with critics and has a score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes , with reviewers calling the movie "bracingly effective" and "an inventive, nerve-shredding horror film".

Raimi, who's directed everything from The Evil Dead to Spider-Man to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , was at WonderCon to promote his new movie Boy Kills World, which he produced. Directed by Moritz Mohr and starring Barbarian actor Skarsgård, the film follows a deaf man who's trained by a mysterious mentor to take vengeance on the people who killed his family.

"We talked a lot about what we loved," Mohr told Total Film of the movie's influences. "I love old kung-fu movies. I love Asian cinema. I play a lot of video games and I read a lot of manga. Anime is a big influence. But also shitty little Saturday-morning cartoons that I loved growing up. I knew I wanted to make a revenge movie with a deaf protagonist, but that was literally the one constant."

Boy Kills World arrives on the big screen on April 26. In the meantime, check out our picks of the other best upcoming movies on the way in 2024.

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I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.

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Movie Review – Barbarian (2022)

December 13, 2022 by Robert Kojder

Barbarian , 2022.

Written and Directed by Zach Cregger. Starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler, Jaymes Butler, Sophie Sörensen, Rachel Fowler, J.R. Esposito, Kate Nichols, Kate Bosworth, Brooke Dillman, Sara Paxton, Will Greenberg, Derek Morse, Trevor Van Uden, and Zach Cregger.

SYNOPSIS:

A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.

Filmmakers seem to have a new favorite go-to plot device with countless recent movies (spanning multiple genres) that set up their story through accidentally double-booked Airbnbs. Barbarian (written and directed by Zach Cregger, marking his first feature-length work without his regular collaborator Trevor Moore) might be filled with more insanity than all of the others combined.

This is boosted by also being unpredictable in every sense of the word, for better or worse. This movie doesn’t throw curveballs, it throws knuckle-curves on a consistent basis, as Zach Cregger fiddles around with structure and clashing tones that further befuddle the mind of what is happening and what can possibly happen next.

Rather than discuss the characters first, considering such a thing becomes a spoiler in itself beyond the first act, it feels more fitting to address the setting and location of Barbarian . The aforementioned Airbnb sits in a dumpy part of Detroit. At least that’s how the white characters describe the area Tess (Georgina Campbell) happens to be staying in while taking up a job interview as a researcher for an upcoming documentary.

They don’t elaborate, but from the look of things, the houses are falling apart and the community is heavily Black. There is a story about gentrification, incompetent law enforcement, sexual abuse, horrifying basement secrets, and morality here told through gonzo madness that, while it certainly tests logic and credibility, marks the arrival of an unfettered, deranged mind.

Surprising the audience is Zach Cregger’s modus operandi, as Barbarian doesn’t actually have much to say about the social issues it incorporates into its narrative. They are still effective and slide into the story nicely, but given the all-over-the-map trajectory, there are some aspects that get under one’s skin as creepy and disturbing but never quite a shellshock.

If anything, Barbarian functions as a weirdo horror funhouse that zigs just when you think it’s going to zag. There is also a healthy amount of tension since the film has no interest in settling down in one scenario or dynamic or even one genre (the second act is more of a comedy surrounded by all this terror).

Also, credit the entire ensemble game enough to roll with every decision grounded in madness. Georgina Campbell plays Tess with resourceful awareness, especially as a woman that has arrived at an Airbnb already occupied by polite oddball Keith (Bill Skarsgård), justifiably on guard staying the night with a stranger.

Justin Long is also a hoot as a self-absorbed misogynistic doofus that owns the home. Without disclosing the role Michael Patrick Davis plays, it deserves to be noted that his performance is exceptionally freaky and that the makeup and prosthetics department deserves applause. Richard Brake also shows up for a few minutes, effectively slimy and gross in a manner that ties much of the story together.

Zach Cregger shows a lot of promise in terms of twisted imagination, but that doesn’t mean every screenwriting choice he makes is a winner (it’s hard to buy into that anyone would willingly book this house for a variety of reasons, which is a gripe that becomes an afterthought considering the crazy places this movie goes).

There are plenty of red herrings and misdirection here that feel cheap, even if the end result is an easily recommendable nutty ride resulting from some of those swerves. At this early stage of his career, he is a more talented director capable of consistently engaging an audience through mystery, tracking shots, turning clichés on their head, creating a sinister atmosphere, and operating under uncomfortably dark themes.

Mileage will vary for Barbarian depending on how much thought one puts into each ludicrous reveal, but it is so chaotically unhinged everyone should see it at least once.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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45 Scariest Horror Movies That Are Too Disturbing to Re-Watch

Once is enough.

Content Warning: The following article contains discussions of graphic violence, animal cruelty, sexual assault, and rape. Everybody loves a good scare, as the undying popularity of horror movies continues to prove. From unexpected jump scares and eerie atmosphere, to terrifying creatures and supernatural occurrences, a lot of fun can be had with the genre. However, these films aren’t always meant to be a pleasant experience, and there are some horror movies that are actually scary and truly disturbing and twisted that even the most seasoned enthusiast would struggle to sit through.

Whether it’s due to graphic violence, excessive gore, controversial subject matter, or unsettling imagery, these movies are hard to unsee. The scariest horror movies will definitely have viewers questioning the filmmaker's intentions and leave them with no desire to revisit them in the near future. These most disturbing horror movies in cinematic history are full of controversial plots and genuinely nightmare-inducing sequences, which often end up becoming hot topics of discussion among fans and critics alike. Feel good family fun, this certainly is not.

45 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' (2017)

Directed by yorgos lanthimos.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his unique movies, like The Favourite and Poor Things , which usually feature an offbeat tone, quirky characters, and deadpan delivery. However, the director’s darkest film to date is the horror-thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer , which still retains the director’s signature elements, but in a far more sinister manner. Colin Farrell plays Steven Murphy, a wealthy surgeon and family man who has a seemingly perfect life.

When Steven meets the strange and awkward teen Martin ( Barry Keoghan ), he takes him under his wing. Martin then infiltrates his family home, and violent and unsettling occurrences begin to take place. While The Killing of a Sacred Deer isn’t as graphic as some traditional horror movies, it has an eerie and uncomfortable tone that is hard to stomach , making for an uncomfortable viewing experience.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

*Availability in US

Not available

44 'The Exorcist' (1973)

Directed by william friedkin.

Arguably the most iconic demonic possession horror movie , The Exorcist is a classic within the genre, and influenced a whole new generation of horror movies. The film follows Regan ( Linda Blair ), a young girl who becomes possessed by a demonic entity, and her mother, Chris ( Ellen Burstyn ), who enlists the help of two priests to save her.

At the time of release, The Exorcist was the scariest horror movie audiences had ever seen , with viewers even fainting. While some of the film’s scare factor has become outdated thanks to the evolution of filmmaking and effects, and almost seems tame compared to other movies, The Exorcist is still scarier than some horror movies released today. It is striking and unnerving, with visceral imagery that has become legendary in the horror pantheon.

The Exorcist

43 'barbarian' (2022), directed by zach cregger.

Barbarian is one of the most bonkers horror movies to hit screens in recent memory. On the surface, it seems like your standard creepy horror flick. A woman named Tara ( Georgina Campbell ) books an Airbnb, only to find it has been double-booked by a mysterious stranger named Keith ( Bill Skarsgård ). Just when you think you know where the narrative is going, Barbarian flips the script and goes to a totally unexpected and wild place .

The film’s second half is completely demented and gross, but it does not reach the disturbing level of some of the higher-ranked films on this list due to its unexpected humor and self-awareness. Barbarian is a totally wild and unpredictable ride that will have viewers questioning what it is they just witnessed.

42 'The Conjuring' (2013)

Directed by james wan.

James Wan is one of the most popular horror directors working in the industry today, responsible for hits like Saw and Insidious . However, it was his 2013 film The Conjuring that reinvigorated the horror genre for the first time in years, giving it new life. Based on true events (what everybody wants to hear at the start of a horror movie), the film follows paranormal investigators Ed ( Patrick Wilson ) and Lorraine Warren ( Vera Farmiga ), who help a family being terrorized by a supernatural presence.

Along with a genuinely intriguing story and fleshed-out characters, The Conjuring brought back old-school scares in a way that remains fresh and exciting. The film also introduced fans to the now infamous Annabelle doll , and its success would go on to launch a franchise.

The Conjuring

41 'the perfection' (2018), directed by richard shepard.

Netflix has released a slew of original horror films, but one that stands out (and is easily underrated) is The Perfection , starring Get Out and M3GAN ’s Allison Williams . Williams plays troubled music prodigy Charlotte, who returns to her prestigious music school to find that she has been replaced by new star pupil Lizzie ( Logan Browning ).

The pair are sent down a sinister path there is no returning from, embarking on the ultimate revenge plot. While viewers may initially make comparisons to a rivalry narrative like Black Swan , it turns out The Perfection is much more David Cronenberg's body horror style . The film takes big swings and risks, featuring some incredibly repulsive and striking imagery that will leave you squirming.

The Perfection

40 'funny games' (1997), directed by michael haneke.

Despite not technically being a horror movie, Michael Haneke ’s original Funny Games is one of the most terrifying non-horror films of all time , and is truly difficult to stomach. The psychological thriller follows two young men ( Arno Frisch and Frank Giering ) who hold a family hostage in their lakeside vacation home. They abuse and force them to play sadistic games for their own sick entertainment.

The psychotic Paul (Firsch) and Peter (Giering) often break the fourth wall throughout the film, directly addressing the audience. The pair tease the viewers, asking them moral questions and therefore making them feel complicit by simply watching the torture play out on screen. It’s an effective narrative technique that makes the whole viewing experience much harder to digest. By the end of Funny Games , audiences will be asking themselves what exactly they got out of watching something so horrid.

Funny Games (1997)

39 'deliver us from evil' (2014), directed by scott derrickson.

While there are definitely better exorcism films out there than Scott Derrickson ’s Deliver Us from Evil , there is no denying that it leaves you feeling unsettled and frightened. Eric Bana plays Ralph, a police officer who teams up with Mendoza ( Édgar Ramírez ), a priest, to combat possessions that are wreaking havoc on New York City.

From gruesome corpses to otherworldly demons, Deliver Us from Evil features some truly grotesque and scarring imagery that leaves an impact . Its religious themes are also extremely dark and disturbing, but thanks to its cop drama element and moments of levity, it is not the scariest movie on this list. However, the film is still a gnarly and bleak horror outing that is not for the faint of heart.

Deliver Us from Evil

38 '[rec]' (2007), directed by paco plaza and jaume balagueró.

The use of found-footage filmmaking is extremely popular within the horror genre, thanks to the success of films like The Blair Witch Project . One of the most effective and frightening uses of the stylistic technique can be seen in the Spanish horror film [Rec] . Entirely using found footage, it depicts a television reporter ( Manuela Velasco ) and her cameraman ( Pablo Rosso ), who follow emergency workers into a dark apartment building.

There is a virus outbreak, trapping everybody inside and slowly turning people into vicious cannibals. The found-footage presentation makes [Rec] feel terrifyingly authentic and intimate, fully immersing the viewer in a very realistic manner. The gruesome effects, convincing acting, and production elements make it feel as if you are watching a real TV report, and the film’s bleak ending will leave viewers feeling extremely unsettled.

Rent on Amazon

37 'Host' (2020)

Directed by rob savage.

We have all become far too familiar with Zoom and communicating remotely through work meetings and social catch-ups during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, director Rob Savage capitalized on the popularity of the application (and social circumstances) to make Host , a film that proves you don’t need a big budget to make something terrifying .

Filmed entirely through webcams and set on a computer screen, a group of friends perform an online seance and accidentally invite a demonic presence into their homes. Savage uses simple tricks to conjure up genuinely nasty scares during a heart-pounding runtime of just under an hour. Host is a brilliant technical experiment, and Zoom meetings will never be the same again.

36 'The Descent' (2005)

Directed by neil marshall.

One of the most terrifying and claustrophobic movies ever made , The Descent is a lean and nasty horror experience . The film follows a group of friends on a cave expedition, where they become trapped inside and are hunted by bloodthirsty creatures. The film is a back-to-basics horror thriller, utilizing the isolation and limited space of its setting for some truly horrific and visceral sequences.

It starts with a slow-burn build and then releases full carnage for its remaining runtime. The suffocating atmosphere of the caves and the situation makes this film so uncomfortable and scary to watch, as it plays on people’s real-life fears of closed and small spaces. The Descent ’s ending is also incredibly grim, leaving viewers with a sense of hopelessness as the credits roll.

The Descent

Watch on Amazon Prime

35 'Veronica' (2017)

Directed by paco plaza.

Commonly referred to as one of the scariest movies on Netflix , Veronica is full of well-executed scares and demonic imagery that will haunt audiences. During a solar eclipse, a teenage girl ( Sandra Escacena ) uses an Ouija board with her friends to summon her father. Afterward, she becomes plagued by evil forces.

Veronica features all the unease and spookiness of any possession film , but what really makes it so memorable and frightening is the fact that it is loosely based on a true story. It takes inspiration from the Vallecas case, where a young girl similarly used the board to contact a loved one, and died soon after. The movie has a sense of realism that makes it incredibly creepy and difficult to sit through.

Verónica (2017)

Watch on Netflix

34 'The Hills Have Eyes' (2006)

Directed by alexandre aja.

While the 1977 version of The Hills Have Eyes is definitely a horror classic, its 2006 remake is certainly more effective and brutal, and might even be a better version. The film follows a family traveling to California to celebrate an anniversary, but things turn nightmarish when they are captured by mutated cannibals.

The Hills Have Eyes features extreme gore and repulsive elements like animal cruelty and sexual assault , with certain scenes that are particularly hard to stomach. It will make your skin crawl and have you most likely avoiding any kind of road trips in the near future. The mutant cannibals, and the acts they commit, are absolutely horrific. While it’s a well-made horror film that certainly leaves a mark, it is equally traumatizing.

Rent on Apple TV

33 'Sinister' (2012)

Considered by many to be the scariest modern horror film of all time, Sinister is… well, pretty darn sinister. Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswald, a true crime non-fiction crime writer who moves his family into a house where gruesome murders took place. Desperate for inspiration for his work, he delves into who may have been responsible for those murders, but his research reveals horrifying discoveries.

The film has a simple plot but is executed in a way that will be lodged in your subconscious for a long time. The Super-8 tapes Hawke’s character stumbles upon featuring various murders are already uneasy to watch , but it’s the demonic face that keeps popping up in each of them that is the stuff of nightmares. Its terrible twist has also become well-known among horror fans, who likely wish they could watch it all again for the first time.

32 'Hereditary' (2018)

Directed by ari aster.

Director Ari Aster has cemented himself as a profound and fresh new voice in horror over the last few years, as exhibited with his debut Hereditary . The film follows a grief-stricken family after the death of their matriarch, as they discover sinister ancestral secrets through supernatural disturbances.

The scariest movie ever from A24's collection, Aster’s film is bleak and utterly hopeless, littered with unnatural and explicit imagery among its unnerving ambiance. Toni Collette ’s performance is incredibly chilling , and one particular scene involving a nut allergy takes an abhorrent turn that viewers will not soon forget. That one scene has likely shocked and terrified viewers into never seeing the film again. Dark, dark stuff.

31 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' (1974)

Directed by tobe hooper.

Many argue that modern horror films are always scarier, but that’s not the case when it comes to 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre . The film sees Leatherface and his cannibal family hunt down a group of unsuspecting hitchhikers for the first time, with mean and bloody results.

Thanks to its balance of sheer dread and extreme gore, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was banned in several countries when first released, and is still considered one of the scariest movies of all time to this day . Disgusting and remarkably impressive for its time, it is certainly not for the faint of heart. Although later entries in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre haven't managed to reach the impressive heights of the first, there's still something to be said for the way the 1974 film established an enduring franchise beloved among horror fans.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Watch on Peacock

30 'Goodnight Mommy' (2014)

Directed by veronika franz and severin fiala.

Goodnight Mommy is a slow-burn psychological horror film that is drenched in dread from start to finish. It follows twin brothers Elias ( Elias Schwarz ) and Lukas ( Lukas Schwarz ), who begin to suspect the identity of their mother ( Susanne Wuest ) when she comes home covered in bandages after facial reconstructive surgery.

Always cited among the scary horror movies, Goodnight Mommy gets under your skin with its creepy atmosphere and delicate pace but will have viewers squirming during its icky and excessive torture scenes, where the torture is being carried out by children. It goes to extremely dark and shocking places and knows how to use its twisted mother-child relationship to its full advantage, subverting expectations of what such a connection should look like.

Watch on Tubi

29 'The Innocents' (2021)

Directed by eskil vogt.

If you’ve seen any of their films, you’d know the Nordic always nail atmospheric horror and use it to create really scary movies. Pair that with creepy kids carrying out sadistic acts, and you’ve got yourself some pretty uncomfortable viewing. The Innocents takes these elements to create an understated yet relentlessly haunting film.

During a bright Nordic summer, a group of kids experiment with their newfound powers as things take a dark turn. The violence and cruelty on display (including towards animals) in The Innocents are made all the more difficult to stomach because it is being carried out by children. The characters who are supposed to be innocent due to their age commit unspeakable acts without remorse, with each one worse than the last. Viewer discretion is advised.

Watch on Shudder

28 'Terrifier 2' (2022)

Directed by damien leone.

The Terrifier movies are some of the most controversial in the horror genre, and sequel Terrifier 2 outdoes its predecessor in every way possible. This time round, Art the Clown ( David Howard Thornton ) is resurrected by an evil entity, and returns to the town of Miles County to terrorize Sienna ( Lauren LaVera ) and her brother Jonathan ( Elliot Fullman ).

Almost an hour longer than the original film, Terrifier 2 goes all out in the gore and shock department . Audiences reportedly vomited and fainted while watching the film, which includes detailed and nausea-inducing kills and torture from Terrfier 's main villain . While it is undoubtedly difficult to watch, hardcore fans of the slasher genre responded positively to the film, as it received rave reviews and performed surprisingly well at the box office.

Terrifier 2

27 'tusk' (2014), directed by kevin smith.

When one thinks of most Kevin Smith movies , buddy comedies and low-budget cult classics usually come to mind. However, what doesn’t come to mind is twisted body horror, which is exactly what Smith goes for in 2014’s Tusk . Justin Long plays an arrogant podcaster who travels to Canada to interview a famous recluse ( Michael Parks ) who has a strange obsession with walruses.

The next day, Wallace (Long) wakes up to discover that Howe (Parks) plans to surgically transform him into a walrus. While retaining certain comedic elements that the director is known for (you’d have to with such an absurd plot), Smith truly pushes the boundaries of visual imagery in a grotesque and unnatural way . The practical effects used to turn Long into a human walrus are realistically disgusting, and will likely leave a lasting effect.

26 'Mother!' (2017)

Directed by darren aronofsky.

One of the most polarizing movies of all time , director Darren Aronofsky 's Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence as the titular protagonist, who lives with Him ( Javier Bardem ) in a Victorian mansion in the countryside. When unexpected guests arrive one after the other, chaos ensues as Mother is caught in a confusing and terrifying turn of events.

Unsettling from start to finish, the film relies heavily on allegory, extreme sound design, and shaky camera work to convey its metaphorical story. This same metaphorical approach is what has made it so divisive among fans and critics alike, who can't agree about whether it's a brilliant masterpiece or a jumbled mess of a film. It escalates in an unexpected and genuinely frightening way and reaches an explosive conclusion that will leave viewers perturbed and never wanting to revisit Mother! again .

Mother! (2017)

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"Barbarian" (2022) Movie Review
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COMMENTS

Barbarian movie review & film summary (2022)
Barbarian is a horror film that follows a group of friends who venture into a remote forest where they encounter a sinister cult and a terrifying creature. The film is praised for its atmospheric cinematography, intense performances and unpredictable twists, but criticized for its excessive darkness and slow pace. Roger Ebert gives the film a mixed review, analyzing its strengths and ...
Barbarian (2022)
Barbarian. In Theaters At Home TV Shows. Traveling to Detroit for a job interview, a young woman books a rental home. But when she arrives late at night, she discovers that the house is double ...
Barbarian Review
Barbarian Review In a world full of monsters, Barbarian calls them all out to play. ... Best Horror Movies So Far In 2022. 10 Images. Verdict. Barbarian is barbaric, comedically brutal, and the ...
Barbarian
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 6, 2023. Barbarian has the framings of the perfect first time horror film. Has some of the creepiest setups and executions of horror this year. This is ...
Barbarian (2022)
Barbarian: Directed by Zach Cregger. With Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis. A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.
'Barbarian' Review: A Ratched New Horror Classic
Editor: Joe Murphy. Music: Anna Drubich. With: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler, Jaymes Butler. A simple premise involving a ...
'Barbarian' Is the Most Surprising Horror Hit of the Year
Barbarian laces each narrative loop with sharp social commentary. Tess's most reckless decisions are made with the goal of helping someone; she's not stupid, merely noble, which infuses her ...
'Barbarian' Review: This Rental Is Hell
Watch on. As expected from this kind of haunted-house thriller, the doors seem to open and close on their own, leading Tess to the one place any horror buff will know means trouble: the basement ...
Barbarian (2022) (B+)
Film Movie Reviews Barbarian — 2022. Barbarian. 2022. 1h 42m. R. Horror/Mystery/Thriller. The A.V. Club Review. B+. Where to Watch. Buy. ... Barbarian bashes ahead with a brilliant new vision of ...
Barbarian review: A twisty horror movie that goes beyond its well-kept
Barbarian 's shifts, fortunately, are subtler and scarier. As the film sinks deeper into the house it begins in, its best trick is one of the oldest in cinema. Cregger makes sure the biggest ...
'Barbarian' review: Breaking the rules of horror in brilliant fashion
Movies 'Barbarian' review: Breaking the rules of horror in brilliant fashion . Sep. 7, 2022 at 1:02 pm Updated Sep. 7, 2022 at 4:43 pm . By . Qina Liu. Seattle Times news producer. Movie review.
Barbarian Is the Smartest, Funniest Horror Movie in Ages
Movies Barbarian Is the Smartest, Funniest Horror Movie in Ages Score one for un-elevated horror. By Sam Adams. Sept 27, 2022 6:21 PM. Justin Long in Barbarian. 20th Century Studios.
'Barbarian' Review: A Gleefully Gonzo Horror Flick
Rated R, 1 hour 42 minutes. Bill Skarsgard. Justin Long. A young woman gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to share a rental house in Zach Cregger's gonzo horror film, 'Barbarian.'.
'Barbarian' ending explained: Breaking down all the twists
That one-word title looms large over " Barbarian ," one of the most delightfully twisted horror films of 2022, in which a woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) stumbles into a nightmare when ...
Barbarian
Golden Schmoes Awards. • 4 Nominations. In town for a job interview, a young woman arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that her rental has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway, but soon discovers that there is much more to be ...
Barbarian Review
on. September 7, 2022. By. Meagan Navarro. Bloody Disgusting's Barbarian review is spoiler-free. Meet one of horror's biggest, most savage surprises of the year. Writer/Director Zach Cregger ...
'Barbarian' review: Clever horror movie about a double-booked Airbnb
3 min. 4. ( 3 stars) "Barbarian" has a typical horror movie setup. Tess (Georgina Campbell) is in Detroit for a job interview. On a dark and stormy night, she arrives at her Airbnb, but ...
Barbarian (2022 film)
Barbarian is a 2022 American horror thriller film written and directed by Zach Cregger in his solo screen writing and directorial debut. It is produced by Arnon Milchan, Roy Lee, Raphael Margules, and J. D. Lifshitz.The film stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long.The plot sees a woman finding out that the rental home she reserved has been accidentally double-booked by a man ...
Barbarian Review
by Siddhant Adlakha |. Published on 28 10 2022. Release Date: 27 Oct 2022. Original Title: Barbarian. Barbarian is best experienced with little foreknowledge. Writer-director Zach Cregger packs ...
Barbarian (2022)
Barbarian, 2022. Written and Directed by Zach Cregger. Starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler ...
Barbarian (2022) Movie Review
Barbarian (2022) Movie Review - Dungeons, tragedy, and thrills abound in this compelling horror flick. ... Read More: Barbarian Ending Explained. Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here! Verdict - 8/10. 8/10. 8/10. Categories films, horror. Leave a comment. Comment. Name Email Website.
Barbarians movie review & film summary (2022)
Barbarians. The horror movie trope about how you shouldn't build housing tracts on indigenous lands used to be considered a mildly progressive one. Nowadays it looks a little patronizing, to say the least. And given that recent developments in historical interpretation have revealed that, to put it in simplistically blunt terms, all land is ...
Sam Raimi names a horror movie with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes
Sam Raimi has revealed his favorite recently released movie - and it's a horror film from 2022. "I thought Barbarian was great," Raimi said during an appearance at WonderCon when asked if he'd ...
Barbarian (2022)
Barbarian, 2022. Written and Directed by Zach Cregger. Starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler ...
45 Scariest Horror Movies That Are Too Disturbing to Re-Watch
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Image via A24. Director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his unique movies, like The Favourite and Poor Things, which usually feature an offbeat tone, quirky characters ...