With Jordan Peele proving that comedians can go horror-director, now enters director Zach Cregger. Cregger is one-third of the spectacle troupe The Whitest Kids You Know and has starred in a number of spectacle shows over the past decade. His movie Barbarian garnered lots of whoosh during a round on the festival circuit. It has a simple premise: a young woman (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb in Detroit only to find it is seemingly double-booked, with Bill Skarsgård as the other guest. Against her largest instincts she decides to stay the night there, and matters ensue.
Barbarian is a difficult movie to review without spoilers. A strength of the mucosa is its unmannerliness to constantly play on your expectations and take drastic tonal shifts. For the most part this works really well and the shifts finger seamless thanks to Cregger’s creative use of jump cuts, music, and filters.
The mucosa is quite scary, and the tension builds well. Many scenes rely on starring into the visionless womb of a subterranean area, and Cregger doesn’t trickery by subtracting any type of unnatural lighting, relying instead on humanity’s fundamental fear of the dark.
The tint is moreover quite good. Campbell impresses as the lead, possessed with a quiet strength and simple charisma that allows you to take her perspective with ease. Skarsgård is moreover a sunny bit of casting, and Cregger knows exactly how to use him in this film. Entering later is Justin Long, who is spanking-new as an unaware, douchey character. Some of the film’s weightier scenes are during the segment where his weft is introduced.
Close scrutiny reveals some flaws. While the mucosa does a unconfined job of playing on expectations and keeping you on your toes, it does so in part to unhook pointed commentary. The Peele comparisons are tempting, but whereas Peele’s commentary works with the plot of his films, it feels a little increasingly ham-fisted here. Long’s weft is so lattermost that he’s too much of a send-up to unhook the intended points. There is a small moment of self-examination with his character, but it’s scrutinizingly played for a joke.
The film’s internal logic moreover goes unanswered. In a sense, none of that is the point, but the mucosa goes out of its way to ask unrepealable questions and set up unrepealable moments that don’t make much sense by the time credits roll.
That’s not to say Barbarian is bad, by any means. It’s like trying to enjoy a unconfined rich piece of chocolate confection that is so crumbly you get a mess on your hands trying to shove it in. Luckily, messy chocolate confection still tastes pretty good.
