I’ve always been iffy on the whole Airbnb thing. Like, why would you stay in a stranger’s house when you could spend the night at a perfectly reasonable hotel? Who knows what kind of maniac could live there? Same with rideshare apps. How are you supposed to know the person who’s picking you up isn’t a complete lunatic? I haven’t done either of those things and I have made it this far in life without getting slaughtered. Then again, if people in horror movies made smart decisions, they wouldn’t be in a horror movie.
Barbarian tells the story of Tess (Georgina Campbell) who rents an Airbnb online, only to discover it’s ocupado. Since the guy who’s renting it already (Bill Skarsgard) seems nice enough, she accepts his invitation to share the house with him for the night. Tess slowly lets down her guard until…
People have been very good about not letting the secrets of Barbarian slip, so I will return the favor and refuse to go any further describing the plot. I will say writer/director Zach Cregger does a good job setting up the characters and scenario. It’s only in the second half when he pulls a Death Proof on us and starts to follow a new main character (Justin Long) does it begin to stumble. Once we finally learn the big secret of what’s inside the house, I had already grown tired of being jerked around so much. By that point I was nearly mentally checking out of the film, so the big reveal just didn’t make much of an impact on me.
Lots of people had talked Barbarian up, so I guess my expectations were a bit too high. To me, it really wasn’t as freaky as some were suggesting. Again, I won’t spoil it, so I’ll tread lightly. I’ll just say that… well… OK… it seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me, especially if you had a certain fetish that I won’t mention… again… due to spoilers. I mean, c’mon, I’ve seen hundreds of worse fates in horror movies than the one that befell our hero here.
So, I guess it’s all relative. I didn’t find the finale as shocking as many horror fans obviously did. I won’t make a big deal about it though. No use crying over spilled milk.
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