BARBARIAN: One Good Point, Badly Made // A Review
I almost never, ever pick a random movie on a random streaming service but I thought I'd try it this time for a bit of surprise.
I thought the preview image and the marketing looked very fun and 80s what with the big, blocky and curvy font and the intense deep red. The moment I saw that it was actually released in the 2020s, something in my heart and brain was mildly disappointed but not at all surprised.
I usually fill this part with some pre-amble and what I thought about the movie going into it but there is nothing I know so there's nothing to tell.
Content Warning: SA
This post will be mainly discussing the plot so it will contain spoilers.
My Justification For Taking Notes Segment (The Plot)
To take you on the journey, the film appears to start with the notion that the horror is of airbnbs which I guess is fine for them to say and the company won't kick up a fuss about it. To be clear, I don't know enough about it but what I do know is that the culture of airbnbs in the USA has gotten way out of control. Whilst its a problem in most western places, America basically has no rules.
So I just have to believe the worst possible plot elements with regards to the airbnb. We do also have the annoying quest for the lockbox and the potential of the agency not responding. This felt less like a horror movie and more like observational comedy, even in spite of the spiky horror music that keeps playing for literally no reason for the first thirty minutes.
The Dead Herring
Tess - the main character - gets to the airbnb and Bill Skarsgard is already there because he booked it using a different app or something. So you're supposed to be thinking right now that the company has set this up on purpose for some reason or that the guy is behind it because he is acting needlessly suspicious. His name is Keith but Bill Skarsgard has never looked more like Bill Skarsgard in this role ever.
The problem is that I just didn't buy what they were selling because when you write a character to be overly suspect this early on in a story like this, it's impossible to believe. We have been conditioned so much as an audience to let the deception wash over us in the first thirty minutes of a movie or the first quarter of a book. It's just annoying at this point.
I also feel like this character that Bill Skarsgard is playing is just kind of, doing whatever the script needs him to do. One second, he is tired and stand-offish, then he is weird and oppressive, then he is quirky and awkward, then he is charming and knowledgeable and then he is funny and witty. It's not really an evolution; it's just random. You maybe are supposed to think that Bill Skarsgard has sussed Tess (played by Georgina Campbell) so that they sleep together but that doesn't happen so I guess you're supposed to think he's a chill-ass viber.
I got excited for a second because she starts hearing him scream in the middle of the night so I thought it might be a thing about skinwalkers but instead, nothing happens. Again. We're about thirty minutes into the movie at this point.
Confused About Where The Fear Lies
She gets up for her interview (that's why she's there by the way - for a job interview) and it plays scary music over a derelict town and I can't help but feel like I am supposed to be scared of poverty. It's a bad-looking neighbourhood but I have legitimately seen worse. It is also starting to annoy me that this all feels like a TV show. The shots in this show look like NCIS with the colour palette of most standard Netflix TV shows a la YOU or Stranger Things.
She goes to her interview and she tells the woman where she's staying and shows genuine concern but decides not to be specific. Not a lot to say other than "If she has important information, not telling her is really dumb" but it is a horror movie so whatever. I'm trying to not be a misery guts but there is only so many movies I can take that try and get away with the supposed charm that comes packaged with the exercising of horror tropes. I think it's completely fine of me to want more.
The Movie Actually Starts
Tess is chased by a homeless man who is so obviously not the bad guy that it's actually insulting to my intellect that the movie created this forced, fake tension. It's so obvious that he is trying to warn her about something and it doesn't warrant the shaky car keys moment at all - especially after she describes herself as a fighter to the woman interviewing her. Again, I am being almost exhaustively class conscious here but I would not be scared of a homeless man in this situation. She makes no attempt to communicate with him and I get that it's a different dynamic for women but most of this movie is about how women have far better and more adaptable survival techniques. I suppose she does "survive" here but not like the rest of the movie.
I can fully understand the fors and againsts in the conversation here but the director is clearly trying to illustrate how women are better in fight-or-flight situations by comparison and this does not illustrate that in my opinion because I do not automatically believe that homeless people are dangerous and this is from someone who was robbed by a homeless man at a cash machine.
Anyway, instead of plotting how to leave and get in her car, she phones the police and flings herself around the house in a blind panic again. Then, she somehow gets locked in the basement?
I swear to God that I was paying attention but I have no idea how or why she ended up in the basement. I thought the door she couldn't open was the bathroom. But forget all that because the movie is starting now for real this time. She finds a creepy passageway and I am actually into this because I have always been fascinated with the notion of "secret rooms" in American TV shows. I like reading stories from people - true or not - about how they never knew that there was a person living in their crawl space. The unsettling weirdness of the old gurney lined up against a modern tripod is a cool image that doesn't really come back again.
This completely freaks Tess out again and at the time, I wrote in my notes that "the script knows how stupid this is" because she is explaining this to Bill Skarsgard who has just got back from wherever he was and he doesn't understand what is so scary about this. I can only ascertain from this all is that the writer believes that the woman's intuition is correct and she is right to be scared of that place, ultimately.
I don't really like the dialogue in this movie because it's written in what I like to call "Netflix Language" where the writers and producers think the audience is dumb and needs absolutely everything to be explained to them. However, the most telling line of dialogue in the whole film is at the start when the two main characters are having wine together and she tells him that guys are reckless and often face no consequence and women are societally trained to be more careful. I believe that. The problem is that Tess is frightened of poverty and the homeless. It's a big gripe for me, I'm sorry to keep bringing it up.
Bill Skarsgard wants to go into the basement to see what it is before they leave and he somehow gets lost, bitten, cries for help and then gets his head bashed in by a big, naked, evil woman and I probably would've liked this scene more if I could've seen what was going on because most of it was dark. Bill Skarsgard was warning Tess to go the other way away from the monster and she wouldn't listen to him for like a whole-ass minute and then he dies and it almost hard-cuts to a completely different movie.
Ham-fisted Social Commentary - Deservedly So
I have literally never seen a movie with Justin Long in it. My only exposure to him is this American podcast I listen to that talk about him intermittently and discuss him in the light that he is incredibly famous and arguably more famous than PewDiePie. I feel as though this is a transatlantic crossed wire because I have no idea who he is despite having seen Dodgeball and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. So if I am disparaging about his acting ability or credentials in any way, just know it's not from a place of bias.
A lot happens here but at the same time, nothing happens at all and I was largely unimpressed by this change of pace.
So AJ is a portrait of a Hollywood rapist. That's pretty much all you need to know. There's plenty of exposition about the various ways that his life is ruined but the movie is trundling towards his "Michigan properties" which, as it happens, is the house with the fucked up basement and the naked lady living it that he somehow doesn't know about.
Now, the script is very carefully nebulous about this character's level of fame in Hollywood but the whys, whens, and hows really need to be answered here. Why did he buy this house in this neighbourhood with the expectation of making money off of it as an airbnb or any money at all? At what point did he buy this house because part of the story is the neighbourhood deteriorating over time, so when? How did he not know about any of these aspects at any point? Again, I am trying to give leeway to the terrible culture of airbnbs in the United States and I'm not dumb. I understand that it's a cartoonishly evil representation of landlords and you're supposed to look forward to his inevitable death but I'm not that fickle. You can't win me over like that.
They have to make it clear to us that he definitely raped the woman in the most ham-fisted way possible and I tell you what, I am completely fine with that because you cannot underestimate the intelligence and media illiteracy of your common male when confronted with even a mildly ambiguous, fictional rapist. A vast chunk of them still think Skyler White is the antagonist of Breaking Bad.
I'm Still Bored
It's about 70 minutes into the movie and only then do we really scratch the surface of the reason to be for the big grey monster lady. AJ encounters Tess in the underground and she has survived by pretending to be a baby which she realizes is what the monster truly wants. It gets very silly here and any comedy up until this point hasn't even made me snort air out of my nose. All I'm thinking right now is how much time they've wasted of mine and that I don't understand why she brained Bill Skarsgard or bit him.
The monster forcibly tries to breastfeed AJ the long way and Tess uses the distraction and escapes the house in a close shave as a homeless man helps her out. Presumably Tess will be donating her old duvets to the shelters in future. BARBARIAN then engages in one of my least favourite horror cinema tropes of all time: "We have to go back and save them!"
Like, I know Tess doesn't know that AJ isn't worth saving but once again, it does not align with the message at the beginning; "Women have to be more careful to survive". This is the least careful thing anyone has ever done. I don't really care that it's the moral thing to do. It may also trouble you to find out that I think the police's reaction was entirely believable and probably the most realistic thing in the entire movie. If she had planned a big heist with all the people living in the commune, I might have forgiven the logic but she just goes back there herself.
I have ran out of high-res images from Google and I do not care enough to capture it directly
The scene in which AJ is locked with a decaying man brings to attention something I didn't even realize was bothering me about this movie. They show almost no violence or gore clearly. They make every effort to imply or disguise any violence. To the point of where the speechless goblin man who isn't very well shoots himself off camera after showing Justin Long a VHS tape that is somehow more revolting than Zack and Miri Make a Porno - a VHS tape that is not shown to the audience either. I'm thinking "This movie is an 18+ for gore and violence and nudity with a 80s slasher movie aesthetic in it's poster". Aside from it's themes, it could be one of the tamest movies that I've ever seen.
An Explanation?
It flashes back to the 1970s and you know it's the 70s because the grass is really green and it's full of white neighbours who want to leave because black people are allowed to live there now; "The Neighbourhood is going downhill"
I'm seated for this because I'm eager for an explanation for all of this but it doesn't really give us one. It's just a creepy old man doing various creepy things whilst a 360 GoPro cam films him being weird. He's shopping for a "homebirth" but obviously not because he is being needlessly creepy about everything. Old-style, cheesy radio adverts play any time he is in the car because the filmmakers think you're dumb and wouldn't be able to recognize the time period even though he is in a Ford Grenada. But I do fear the macabre world of 60s and 70s America where there was so little thought put into the notion of every day people committing sex crimes and there was almost no security. The thought about how many crimes of that nature happened back then with nobody knowing or caring keeps me up at night sometimes.
But it doesn't really show him doing anything incriminating until he walks into the evil house and then there's a load of screaming and stuff and then it hard-cuts back to current events. You learn right at the end of the movie that this man was essentially keeping women in his family prisoner and committing incest and rape on a constant basis and that is how the evil monster lady came to be and presumably the ill man who couldn't speak.
Wipe that from your memory though because it's not explained yet.
How It Ends
Tess goes back to the basement after running the Mother over with her land rover and AJ just panics and shoots Tess because he is stupid and emotional. She's fine though. Don't worry. They walk over to the encampment as he constantly promises that he'll make things right. The guy at the encampment says he's been there for fifteen years and she's never found the place so of course, she emerges from... somewhere? A manhole cover? She has access to the sewer system now, I guess. She rips his head off or whatever and gives chase and Tess, despite being hurt, hungry and shot, is able to outrun her up several sets of stairs.
AJ decides to push Tess off this silo/water tower-like structure as a "distraction" so he can get away and she falls onto the monster and is still alive somehow. I swear that the monster was following them up there but is somehow at the bottom of the silo and doesn't have the wherewithal to catch Tess despite believing to be her mother.
AJ meets them and the monster decides to push her thumbs into his eyes as they leak hot brown curry for some reason. Tess than continues to gaslight the creature into believing that they have a mother-daughter relationship, saying that she cannot go back to the house and that she needs to flee the nest. The monster acquiesces as though it knows that Tess is going to shoot her with the gun in one single moment of actual pathos.
Then credits roll and it's the Stranger Things font and colour and I almost threw up in my mouth.
Scratching my Head
I don't normally do this until after I complete a write-up but I couldn't help myself. I had to look up what people thought about this movie purely on the basis that it does involve creditable staff behind it. I have not seen any of Zach Cregger's movies but I have no reason to believe that he would write or direct anything unscary or unfunny. As one of a few now whom have transitioned from US sketch comedy to horror movies, it seemed unlikely that the man behind the laudable Weapons would produce something this vapid. But that's what's happened and I don't know why people can't see it.
I often wonder with things like this that I am fundamentally missing something and that I'm the dumb one but I thought the message was fairly obvious so I did some research only to find that I was exactly right. Outside of reading an interesting think-piece about the similarities between Justin Long's and Bill Skarsgard's characters, the general public are surprised that a B-Horror movie has one single good point. They don't care about how it was written, shot, acted or executed on any level.
I just despair because I don't want the bar to be this low. Underneath all this bitching and moaning criticism, there is a good movie within here somewhere. I can't help but feel that the decision to meet halfway between ridiculous comedy and monster horror made both sides suffer.
Back to Front
You find out way too late that the horror of the basement and those within it is far greater and more dangerous than what is shown to the audience and we've not been shown much. The notion that these homeless people in the camp have to deal with the monster coming out of the house and roaming the streets is a way more interesting concept for a horror. A forgotten community that is a chore for the police who wish for nothing else but to ignore them and dismiss them as crack addicts, have to rely on each other for survival. But it's as though the writers were looking for reasons for people to be in the fucked-up house. So much so that the premise of it being an airbnb with bad management is totally irrelevant, making me feel like all that stuff was a waste of time and investment from me.
I've probably said this already but I couldn't help but feel that this monster would be way more interesting if it was in a Resident Evil or an Outlast game.
To conclude this article, finally, I'll just say this last thing. In order for me to miss the point that men and landlords are a terrible and selfish class of people and that women are far more likely to pay the price for men's mistakes/their own, I would have to be a lobotomized cockroach stuck on it's back with it's legs ripped off.
4.8/10