When I sat down to watch Barbarian, I knew very little about it. The marketing I saw was rather vague. People I knew who had seen it kept their opinions equally vague when telling me about it. Nonetheless, it seemed to be getting some positive traction. With it becoming available on HBO Max to stream, I was able to dive in for myself and see what Barbarian was actually about. I can say that the less you know about it going in, the better.

Pros

Interesting camera angles and art direction
Visual storytelling used effectively
Good creepy moments and slow build-up in the first act
Unpredictable in how the plot will progress
Good acting from the main stars
Some characters are appropriately smart and dumb in spots

Cons

When everything is explained, there are still some questions left over
While still very good, the second and third act are not as good as the first
A movie that does not make me want to book an Airbnb anytime soon, or talk to the cops for that matter

Plot & Thoughts

A young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb on the outskirts of Detroit, late at night and in the rain. When she’s unable to get in, a young man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) lets her in. It turns out the house was double-booked, and since neither has a place to go. Tess is appropriately apprehensive about staying in this place with a guy she doesn’t know, who also happens to be a little socially awkward. The awkwardness makes it difficult to interpret any nice gestures he makes without considering there might be some insidious intentions underneath the surface. Regardless, they agree to split the place and get a refund from Airbnb for the trouble. And then, stuff starts happening.

Much like my wise friends who didn’t tell me anything more than their overall opinion, I’ll keep the synopsis vague. When you consider how most modern trailers give away too much, the marketing for Barbarian was likely coy for a reason. If there’s actually an effort to keep the audience in the dark before seeing it, then I think that’s a strategy worth abiding. It worked for Hitchcock’s Psycho, and it worked for Barbarian when I saw it, as my experience was definitely improved by not knowing what to expect.

The opening act of Barbarian is thoroughly creepy and pulls you in. It’s tightly shot and written, using visual storytelling to establish the characters and the environment. Skarsgård does a lot for the character of Keith in making him both seem potentially harmless and dangerous at the same time. The strange serendipity of how both Tess and Keith end up at the Airbnb and what they have in common allows for an uninformed viewer to speculate and guess what it was all about like I did. There’s a great deal of tension in the first act that builds and builds. Even after brief moments of levity, it comes right back to being eerie and unsettling. While I attribute that to the smart direction and acting, part of this was also achieved through the cinematography and the sound design.

After the end of the first act, I didn’t know what to expect. There are some wild tone shifts and a crazy change of pace and everything just rebalances. It’s a rather unpredictable film but it manages to keep you hooked and interested the whole way through to the finale. I would say that the latter portion of the film is not as tightly woven as the beginning, but I was still thoroughly entertained. When I was able to shake off the shock and surprise, I had some lingering questions left over about certain characters and events. However, they were more questions of curiosity rather than the type in Prometheus where the questions create vacuous black holes in the plot. There are some things that I wish worked out differently, but I can also say their conclusion was perfectly logical as well.

TL;DR

Barbarian was a pleasant surprise. While I normally don’t care about knowing the spoilers of a film before seeing it, I am glad that I didn’t know much about this one. It allowed me to speculate what might be going on and allowed me to be unsure of the intentions of certain characters, making the first act of the film a phenomenal horror experience. When the movie progresses, it still retains my interest with a bit of mystery and some good acting from the cast. If you want a creepy horror movie to watch, Barbarian is a great choice.

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