A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.
“Barbarian” has a simple enough premise. Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at her Airbnb in the pouring rain late one night but discovers that the owner double booked the property. Keith (Bill Skarsgård) is already staying there and convinces Tess to room with him, which she reluctantly agrees to. However, there is more to the house than meets the eye as sinister occurrences start to reveal themselves and fall into place as the film progresses.
Justin Long also stars as AJ, an actor faced with sexual assault allegations. AJ is a smarmy man who holds no respect for women. He is whiny, two-faced, and someone used to always get what he wants. While trying to get ahead of the allegations that will tarnish his career, he knows he needs to save some money and thus flies to Detroit to sell some of the properties he owns there. The character is despicable, but Long does a great job of adding absurdist humor to this guy as he googles whether unfinished basements can be part of the square footage of a house.
Director Zach Creggar does an excellent job of building suspense, especially in that first act with Skarsgård. We are in Tess’s shoes here as we feel unsettled by Keith, mainly because we, the audience, know the actor who plays him as Pennywise from the “It” films. The camera always shows close-ups of Tess locking the doors. We see shadows move in the peripherals of the shot. The lighting in the movie also impressed me as some pitch-black sequences will have you on the edge of your seat as you try to squint at the screen to anticipate if something will pop out.
A gripe I had with the film was its antagonist, who is more like the Terminator than a human being. At one point, the film sheds some backstory and asks us to be sympathetic; however, it is hard to be compassionate to this being who is like a monster. I also found Tess to be inconsistent in her decision-making; she can be smart sometimes with her cautiousness and knows when to avoid certain situations but can also be very dumb at other points trying to check on others.
The backstory highlights who the real barbarians in the film are, and I wish they had more of a comeuppance than what they got on screen. I feel like the movie dropped the ball by trying to add a MeToo angle to the plot that ultimately did not pay off.
If you’ve seen “X,” I can say that the plot of “Barbarian” is not too far off. Some gross-out gags will make you squirm in your seat, and there are points where you don’t know if you should laugh or just silently cringe. The film was entertaining, but the campiness and absurdity got a bit too much for me.
In Theaters Friday, September 9th
