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, to
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