THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When you go out of town, you should expect the unexpected. But even when you have that mindset, it can be disappointing to not be prepared for it.
PLOT
Barbarian begins with Tess Marshall visiting a neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan for a job interview. She books an Airbnb in the area of Brightmoor, but finds it double booked upon arrival when meeting a man named Keith, whose scouting locations in Detroit for a community organization he's involved with. With hotels booked due to a local convention, she agrees to spend the night and takes the bedroom, while Keith volunteers to sleep in the living room couch. He even goes out of his way to clean the sheets for her before she goes to sleep. By morning, both adults go about their day as Keith continues scouting and Tess has her interview. When she returns to the house, she is chased inside by a homeless man who demands her to leave. After calling the police about it, she finds a hidden corridor inside the basement. When she goes through, she finds one room with a camcorder, stained mattress and bloody handprints. When she tries to leave, she finds herself locked in. Luckily, Keith arrives to help her get out from a window. When Tess tells him what she saw, he chooses to see it to believe it. When he takes too long, she goes back in to leave with him. She keeps the basement door open by blocking with a chair. When she passes by the room she saw, she follows a subterranean tunnel. Tess would find Keith injured and before they could leave together, he is killed by a tall, naked and deformed woman. Days later, actor AJ Gilbride has been fired from a television series due to rape allegations made by a co-star. After selling assets for legal costs, he chooses to recuperate from the bad publicity by visiting a rental property he owns in Detroit. Ironically, it is the same one that Tess & Keith rented. When he gets there, he notices that people have crashed into the place. When inspecting the house the next day, he finds the tunnel and is chased by the same deformed woman. When he falls into a pit, he meets a surviving Tess, who understands that the woman wants them to act as her children. When AJ refuses to drink milk from her bottle, he gets forced to breastfeed. This gives Tess the advantage to escape the tunnel and leave the house by breaking the window. She reaches out to the police for help, but they act so dismissive towards her, dismissing her as a drug addict. AJ finds another hidden room during his capture. There, he finds a decrepit old man named Frank. Before he takes his life with a gun to his head, he finds a stash of videotapes of him raping women he abducted and keeping captive in the tunnel, raising subsequent children (Confirmed in a flashback set in the 1980s). When the police get called away, Tess runs her car into the woman, leaving her for dead as she goes back for AJ. Mistaking her as the other woman from a distance, he accidentally shoots her with Frank's gun. Regretting what he did, he still carries her out as he leaves. By the time they're out of the house, they briefly take shelter with the homeless man from earlier named Andre (Jaymes Butler). He explains that the woman is Frank's product of multigenerational incest before the figure ambushes and kills him. Both remaining adults go up the water tower as they try to avoid her. AJ would ultimately push Tess off the tower to save himself. The woman would jump after her to shield from the fall, which worked as both of them survived. AJ does go back to Tess again, but the woman kills him by splitting his face in half. The film would end wth Tess shooting her with Frank's gun and stumbling away.
THOUGHTS
I always like to think I've seen it all when I catch up with new horror movies, but boy do I hate being wrong about that yearly. I had low expectations when knowing this was written and directed by Zach Cregger, who did bizarre comedies like Miss March prior. After seeing this, I kept wondering what took him so long to make this. Cregger reached his peak and became the artistic filmmaker he should've been from the start. With every twist and every turn that is made, you're left with the feeling of pure shock. The unpredictability of it only boosts the terror that comes your way. Thanks to impressive cinematography by Zach Kuperstein, it only enhances the feeling of claustrophobia you're already feeling; Feeling that same feeling as the victims are. Even Anna Drubich's score knew how to make the experience accurately unsettling. Aside from all of that, the big selling point of this movie goes to its eery depiction of how 'no good deed goes unpunished'. That statement is explored in a world where evil can come from multiple places. It can be born and bred or naturally preferring bad over good. When we get to see Richard Brake as Frank and create his spawn 'The Mother', that is an example of it literally being born and bred. Brake was naturally good at being bad since in his given screen time, the silence spoke volumes how disgusting Frank was. The man committed such a misdeed for so long, he eventually punished himself as he deserved to be. The Mother was indeed such a tragic figure as she should've not been born as she was. With actor Matthew Patrick Davis wearing a surreal costume, we witness something that is uncontrollably deranged due to not having such deserving love and wanted to pass it on from there. If she couldn't get that, her wrath will be shared instead. Like Frank, she was put out of misery and hopefully taken elsewhere where to get the said love. On the other hand, Justin Long shows AJ as the kind of evil who is aware of being evil and chooses not to be better. It is pretty easy to hate this guy because he doesn't want to admit he is in the complete wrong. Even if he tried to do right by Tess, it does not excuse the sins he made in between. There is no way I'm rooting for someone who raped another and denied it. He straight up implied it to a friend and thought it was okay. He threw every red flag possible before meeting The Mother, which proves he doesn't deserve redemption. And if he did, it would be just as unsettling as the origin of the Mother. Even when he admits Frank is wrong, it doesn't excuse his misdeeds. And when he tried to sacrifice Tess, I just shouted 'Fuck this guy'. So when he met his end, I didn't bat an eye because he had it coming. Consider that the world can be surrounded by so much evil, it can be challenging to find people that are purely good. And luckily, this movie doesn't make us look too hard when being provided with two protagonists who don't need to persuaded to have a heart. Through the roles of Tess and Keith, Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgard show exactly what it is to be a good samaritan. Surprisingly, both are polar opposites when they choose to do good by others because Tess is mostly self aware and actually tries thinking it over before following through, whereas Keith acts before overthinking becomes a possibility. There is no telling if Tess were to help AJ if she knew of his actions, but in the end, I would want to believe she would want to try no matter what, which is part of being good. Keith may have acted awkward towards her, but that was because the situation was. Had he not showed his humble mentality throughout, she would never have warmed up to him. It was a bummer when he died because you know he didn't deserve it in comparison to AJ. As much as he should've just listened to Tess, I don't blame him for the 'see to believe' motive. So with Tess being the final girl in this story, I'm sure she'll find a way to honor him in the next chapter of her life. I respect this movie a lot for each direction it was able to take, but even I can admit that there were directions that didn't work. Like for example, how is it possible for a home to be used on two different Airbnb sites? That doesn't sound like it should and it's a weird way for everything to unfold. I've had my fair share of annoyance towards continuity errors, but my god it's weird for Tess to literally read the text wrong. The text would say '8331' and she would end up saying '8831' which is weird as hell for no one to fix that in the editing room. I regularly don't pick up on small things, but god did I find it uncomfortable seeing the toothbrush charging on the floor. There should've been like a desk or a mini table for it. You're begging for germs when picking it up from the floor. Also, did Keith even know he had night terrors? If he did, he should've told Tess. I don't want to come off begging for realism, but how is the house in good condition when everything else around it is trash. That is straight up unreal compared to Don't Breathe. And how come there was no investigation upon Tess & Keith when they went missing in the tunnel? They don't look like they don't have friends, so someone should've been looking for them. I even wonder why doesn't AJ call the cops? I mean if the management company isn't gonna do anything, he should have called someone that really could have done something. Yes, they reacted differently towards Tess, but you can't guarantee how they'd be. If they actually listened, they likely would've found the tunnel and the only casualty would've been the Mother. Lastly, how did Andre know the whole origin of the Mother and Frank? Did he actually get in that tunnel and survive? I mean that would be insane to be true. I already hate AJ in general for his bullshit, but I can't be the only one who thought it was extra bullshit for his lawyer to not tell him to leave the state before he would do it anyway. I mean it's like he needed an excuse to cut ties with him. I really didn't want to pick on physics, but how come the door doesn't close on its own when AJ enters the tunnel? Even when a chair is blocking it with a chair, it was able to do so when Tess & Keith went in. The only reason it closed the third time is because the Mother did it when spotting the measuring tape. If it symbolizes the main theme of this movie, someone please tell me. However, this is still a generally impressive movie to sit down to. In conclusion, Barbarian is an instant classic of a horror movie for knowing exactly how to think outside the box. You want something thought provoking? This'll do it for you.
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