Rating: R | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: September 9th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: 20th Century Studios
Director(s): Zach Cregger
Writer(s): Zach Cregger

How do you know she can’t get in here?

I did my best to go in blind with Zach Cregger’s Barbarian and, for the most part, I succeeded. Besides knowing Justin Long was in it (which is something to know considering the first forty-two minutes of its one-hour-and-forty-two minute runtime end before he’s seen singing along to the radio in a red convertible), I sat back and waited for the chaos. Because it is chaos. Maybe not as crazy as I was led to believe, but definitely full of out-of-left-field twists and turns.

It needs them too considering everything starts rather generically as Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgård) discover the owner of their Airbnb double-booked them. Is one of them a killer? Is there something else in the house? Has this whole ordeal been orchestrated by an outside party? Familiar questions with seemingly familiar answers until morning breaks.

I don’t want to say too much, but Tess exiting the property in the light of day brings just the first jarring revelation. Cregger is very interested in playing with our preconceptions and shielding details from view long enough to throw them in our face with a sharp cut. But even that isn’t the half of it—not when you still have a monster (Matthew Patrick Davis), overtaxed Detroit police, and misogyny to contend with. Delivering the latter’s messaging with comedy proves somewhat off-putting, but it does also help to keep us off-balance.

Does the whole ultimately end up being just another over-the-top horror film? Yes. I was hoping for something fresh rather than freshly disturbing, but I can’t argue I wasn’t entertained. Pick a messed up topic, take it to its most messed up extremes, and drop an innocent in the middle to see what happens. The formula brings nothing new to the table, but the packaging does enough to make you think it has.

Oh. And it will never not be funny that I had to go to Disney’s press site to get the above still. That’s what happens when you build a monopoly, I guess.

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Georgina Campbell as Tess in 20th Century Studios’ BARBARIAN, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.