Barbarian (2022) ***

 

The horror genre has, perhaps, some of the greatest variation in quality to be found in film. Most horror flicks are trash, made for rapid consumption by teens. They feature poor writing, poor acting, and they try to make up for their faults with gore, nudity, and jump scares. At the other end of the spectrum are those rare horror films that are so great they transcend genre, films like "Deliverance" and "The Shining." In the middle are films that are reasonably serviceable, providing some genuine scares without making you embarrassed to watch. “Barbarian,” the creation of writer/director Zach Cregger, falls in this middle group.

“Barbarian” is good enough, and the twists are scary enough, that I don't want to ruin any of the surprises. Of the plot, I'll just say what all the sites say, which is that a young woman (Georgina Campbell) finds her Air-B&B already occupied by a man (Bill Skarsgard), and then discovers that the house holds some horrifying secrets.

Zach Cregger (“The Whitest Kids U' Know) is mostly known for an extensive, if undistinguished, TV acting career. “Barbarian” is his first solo film project, and he shows some promise as a director. He displays a deft hand at maintaining an exhausting level of tension, then relieving it for a while, before cranking it right back up. He coaxes excellent performances out of his stars, including Justin Long. He gets some great work out of his cinematographer, showing just enough in the darkness to be truly frightening, and then making the burned-out neighborhoods of Detroit look almost as scary in broad daylight.

As a writer, Cregger is less inspired. The plot of “Barbarian” requires too many dumb, unrealistic decisions on the part of the characters. I'm talking about your typical, horror-movie, going-down-to-the-basement kinds of decisions. (In a bad movie, there would be no story without these actions, which no person in their right mind would do in real life. With better writing, circumstances force the characters into a bad situation despite their making reasonable choices along the way.)

“Barbarian” was inspired by The Gift of Fear, a non-fiction book that encourages women to trust their instincts to avoid dangerous situations with men. This is ultimately a story about men using women to feed their appetites, and it flips the script on that theme in some clever ways. Someone will probably write a graduate thesis on how this film shows men what it would be like to have someone force their base urges on you. The movie may take the man-bashing too far, but you mostly won't notice. This being a horror movie, it all just blends into the expected level of violence and abuse. It's a good example of how you can use genre fiction to send a message that would be heavy-handed and preachy in a straight drama.

“Barbarian” is not particularly well-written, and it relies more than it should on jump-scares, but it's a serviceable film that is sometimes funny and definitely scary. It is not on par with some of the best modern horror films, like "Parasite" or "It Follows," but if you want an adrenaline rush, this will get the job done.

3 stars out of 5