Very rarely does a movie come around, where it is better to know as little about the movie as possible, but this is that movie. The less you know the better going into Barbarian. It is a horror film, that twists and turns in ways that were never expected. It is both genius and madness. I wanted it to be something else, but at the same time it was perfect the way it was. It brings in me too culture, but it can also stand alone as a night in the house that goes very wrong. It has so much going for it, and it does a great job of being unique, so I will do my best to give a summary that does not give too much away, but keeps you interested in what happens.
Barbarian starts out in Detroit late at night with Tess, and from the start, you can tell that she is on the downward slope of a relationship from her constant ignoring of this guy’s calls. She arrives to an Airbnb, but nothing seems to be going right. She misremembers the code, and when she remembers the code, there is no key inside, and then when she calls the rental company, it is so late, no one answers. So Tess feels trapped, until she returns to the car, and a light in the house turns on. A man is inside, and he has just woken up due to all of her noise. Keith, the man inside, seems like a nice guy, he lets her inside, and is very welcoming to Tess. He seems like a nice guy, so Tess decides that she will stay the night, despite the Airbnb being double booked. Not the most ideal choice in her mind, but at this late at night, she has very limited options.
There are some bumps in the night, but nothing too wild happens. They both make it through the night, and they only scare each other a little bit, and they leave the next day with some level of infatuation for each other. When Tess does leave the house, she realizes that she is in the one house in the area that is not completely run down, and run down in this sense is used lightly, I mean the other houses in the area are barely standing, and when Tess goes on her interview, the amount of concern on face of the lady who is interviewing her when she says where she is staying shows how bad of an area it is. Despite this reaction, Tess goes back to the home, and before she gets in, some man starts scaring her, and she is ready to leave, but first she needs to go to the bathroom, but there is no toilet paper, so she starts searching, and she ends up in the basement. Tess finds something weird in the basement, but she gets locked in and cannot get out. So when Keith gets home, she is saved, but he thinks she is over reacting, and he goes and investigates. Then for the next hour plus, it continues to get wilder as each minute progresses.
I know that my summary is two paragraphs long, but there is so much movie after this that is great, and all of the movie that this description covers is so intense and unsettling that it cannot help but draw you into it. It is both disconcerting as this lady goes into a house with a guy, she does not know with a background of very spooky music interspersed with moments of will they won’t they. It could just as easily of turned into a rom com as it turned into a haunt. The only reason that it is clearly horror from the start is the soundtrack that is clearly horror. The opening scene is Tess when she arrives to the house at night with whispers and screams playing on the soundtrack, that are immediately unsettling, before you have any idea what is going to happen.
One of my favorite and most accurate reviews I saw on Letterboxd was the person who said their reaction to the movie was one moment was What the…? Then it turned into a haha, then it goes back to what the…? It is constantly flipping back and forth from shocking and scary to a level of comedy. It is hard to describe without spoiling. So the only thing I can really say is that you need to watch it. When the scares hit, they are good, and when it gets weird and gross, it hits those notes, and it hits them hard.
To take the movie to a more serious note. At some point AJ shows up to the Airbnb as the owner of the property. He has just been outed in the me too movement for raping a girl in the show that he a part of creating, so he needs to go view his property to see how much it is worth, so he can liquidate it, so he can fight these charges. As more and more is revealed about AJ, we realize how terrible of a person he is, and even when he thinks he is rounding the corner of abuser to ally, he makes an abhorrent decision.
Also throughout this whole situation, Tess goes to the police, and they completely dismiss her, and they leave her to face the problem herself. Thus contributing to the idea that women are never believed in this arena. While watching, I could not help but think about Deshaun Watson. He was charged with over 20 cases in sexual misconduct for treating massage therapists inappropriately. Supposedly he showed contrition, but his comments on the matter show otherwise, also he has not been formally charged due to all the settling out of court. This led to him only being suspended for eleven games, when he should not have been able to play ever again.
So to not go anymore into this movie, let us just say that it goes well into the depths of humanity that are both scary and comedic. It is a movie well worth watching, because every time you think you have the movie figured out, it takes a wild turn. Initially after the first part of the film I was worried that after watching I would have a nightmare, because it started out pretty terrifying and unsettling, but then it takes some absurd turns that make it less scary, but it is still good despite the turns. Do not look into this movie too much, just go and see it and enjoy the ride! I give it 3.5 stars and a high recommendation to go see it in theaters before you know what happened!
Other Movies (shows) This Week:
Edge of the Unknown: A new documentary series on Disney+ via National Geographic, where Jimmy Chin talks about unbelievable adventure sport athletes, and the adversity that they face in their sports, that cause them to come face to face with death. It is not as good as Free Solo, because it does not take enough time to delve into the stories as deep both emotionally and narratively, but they are worth watching. About 25 minutes each.
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