Barbarian

Nightmares can come in different varieties.  They can be embarrassing, scary, or downright silly the more you think back on them.  Barbarian is a skillful mix of these different kinds of nightmare scenarios.  Even if the final outcome doesn't quiet live up to the expectations of the set up, this is still a great deal of fun.

The film is written and directed by Zach Cregger, a comic actor known for his work with the group The Whitest Kids U Know, and whose previous turn behind the camera was the forgettable 2009 sex comedy, Miss March.  Here, he shows a brilliant knowledge of getting under the audience's skin in different ways.  He starts with a domestic nightmare.  A young woman named Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) has come to Detroit for a job interview with a documentary filmmaker, and has booked an Airbnb for the night.  She arrives to find it in a neighborhood that is virtually run down and abandoned, save for where she is staying.  Even worse, someone else is already staying there, a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård), and Cregger shows a deft hand at playing up the uncomfortable situation for both.

Both are upset about the situation, and not sure what to do.  Of course, Tess has more to worry about, as she's sharing this place with a strange man she knows nothing about.  He seems courteous to her, but of course, that could all be a ruse.  The screenplay, and even the casting of Skarsgård, plays with our expectations.  Of course, we remember him as the demonic Pennywise from the It movies just a few years ago.  He offers her wine and the bed, saying that he will sleep on the couch.  There's a lock on the bedroom door, but in the middle of the night, Tess is awakened by her door being opened.  Going to investigate, she finds Keith asleep and making strange noises as he dreams.

Again, we're not sure what's going on, and for once, the trailer's ad campaign has been wonderfully vague.  Slowly but surely, the movie morphs from a domestic nightmare to a completely different kind, and I will have to tread carefully here in order to avoid spoilers, as the less you know walking in the better.  There are strange noises throughout the house when Tess is alone within it, mainly coming from the basement.  She goes to investigate, which brings about one of the key problems of the film.  As skillful as it can be, it's still a thriller, and must come up with convoluted and often idiotic reasons for its characters to poke around in dark tunnels that they obviously should not be.  What Tess discovers down there, I will leave for you to discover.  I will also let you guess how a spoiled Hollywood star who is facing down a career-ending sex scandal (Justin Long) figures into all of this.

Barbarian is the kind of thriller that knows its familiar, so it tries to throw you off with multiple plot points where the action and narrative switches between different characters.  How everything is connected is part of the fun of the film, and it's overall been thought out pretty well.  Less successful are the moments when we start to get answers to everything.  Like a lot of thrillers, I was having more fun guessing than when the movie is bending over backwards to explain the madness at the center of it.  I will say that even if the outcome is not successful, it's appropriately disturbing on a basic level, and the movie finds the perfect classic "oldie" song to play over the end credits.  

And even if Cregger does not stick the landing completely, he still knows how to capture and hold our attention through the entire running time.  He shows a certain playfulness here, using a subtle sense of humor, while also knowing just when to go for the big shocks.  Sure, he leans a bit into the jump scare territory from time to time, but he mainly favors quiet suspense for most of it, and the reveal of the basement is quite chilling.  His story morphs from one nightmare scenario to another.  Just when we think this will be the story of a woman trapped by a man she can't quite fully trust, it morphs into something else entirely, and continues morphing with the introduction of the Long character, who would normally seem out of place in this movie.

It's this boldness that ultimately won me over, even if the decisions of the characters didn't always make sense, and seemed to be at the mercy of the screenplay.  For his first horror feature, he shows a confidence here.  Barbarian works in the moment you're watching it, and though you shake your head a lot thinking back on it, it holds an undeniable spell as it plays out.  That can be a lot of fun, and this movie is certainly a lot of fun.

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