Alex Moss EditorIt’s hard to think of a contemporary filmmaker as unpredictable as Zach Cregger. With last year’s jaw-dropping Weapons and his upcoming video game adaptation of Resident Evil it’s as good a time as any to rewatch, in glorious 4K, his breakout hit Barbarian.
To divulge too much of the plot would be to spoil Barbarian but the premise is one straight out of your AirBnB nightmares. Away for a job interview in Michigan, Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at her AirBnB only to discover it is already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgard). Concerned for her safety, but with nowhere else to go, Keith welcomes her in and the two spark up a conversation. From there things go south. Meanwhile, in sunny California AJ (Justin Long) has just learned of a sexual allegation against him that will put him in serious financial trouble so travels to try and sell some properties he owns in Michigan.
What makes a Cregger film so compelling is you never know what it’s going to do next. His ability to blend social commentary with shocking horror is one thing but he also manages to weave in an inky black sense of comedy that by all rights shouldn’t work but always does. Barbarian reminds you of how vulnerable women are in a society of violent men. But, in typical Cregger style, it’s when the record is flipped that things become really interesting, and really, really scary.
Crucially, Cregger has an innate ability to put you on edge, relax you into a situation and then pull the rug. The opening scene of Barbarian smartly puts you off kilter, a house in the middle of a run down neighbourhood, a man already in the house, a literal step into darkness. But then Cregger changes tac, reminding you that rarely is anything ever quite what it seems. He relaxes you again, reassures you, sometimes to the point of leaving you wondering what is going on and then… things get dark.
Perhaps what Cregger does so well as a horror filmmaker is allow a character’s fear to infect you. His slow-build tension followed by the utter terror on a character’s face is breathtakingly infectious. It means we often see the terror on the face of a character before we see the horror itself. It’s a simple build-up that works in the same way not seeing the shark in Jaws. Because what we conjure in our mind at the thought of what could make someone’s eyes that wide is infinitely more haunting than what is likely on screen.
For some, Barbarian will be too uneven. It takes big swings both tonally and narratively, but it’s for this reason that Cregger should be celebrated. Because in an era of cut-and-paste big budget films, Cregger is anything but predictable. The second half of Barbarian is as bat-sh*t crazy as the third act of Weapons and just as compelling to behold.
A sinister, occasionally funny and always gripping journey into the depths man will sink to control women, Barbarian is a film to chill and provoke conversation.
BARBARIAN ARRIVES ON 4K ULTRA HD™ AND 4K ULTRA HD™ STEELBOOK ON 7th SEPTEMBER
