Barbarian

 Year:  2022

Director:  Zach Cregger

Screenplay:  Zach Cregger

Starring:  Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Horror

In town for a job interview, Tess Marshall (Campbell) arrives at a rental house she has booked in a run down area of Detroit.  However, when she arrives, she discovers that the house has been double-booked and that there is already a man staying there, Keith (Skarsgård).  Despite the initial awkwardness, Tess decides that she trusts Keith enough to spend the night in the house.  However, when Tess discovers a secret passageway in the basement, it becomes clear that they are not alone on the house.

Barbarian is a film that seems to be going one way, before veering off sharply into other directions.   It takes time to build up, allowing the audience to spend time with the characters, before the horror kicks in, and when it does, it does so with some of the most surprisingly gruesome images seen in mainstream cinema for a long time.  The film boasts some fine performances from Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long, as a charismatic actor who becomes embroiled in a sex scandal.  There is also a strong message about the threat men pose towards women.  The nervous interplay between the suspicious Tess and the friendly Keith, who can't understand why, if their places were reversed, she wouldn't have let him in out of the rain.  As well as AJ, the actor played by Justin Long, who after being accused of assault by a fellow actor, doesn't see what he did wrong, in his words "she just took some convincing".  Being played by a likeable actor such as Long, makes the character all the more disturbing.  The film also doesn't skimp on exciting horror thrills, making this one of the best new horror films I have seen this year.

Georgina Campbell in Barbarian