Josh (Will Stout) and Sam (Mitchell Musolino) grab a bunch of friends and head to a concert on Halloween night. They stop to party at an abandoned barn that the local legend claims is haunted by a miner, a scarecrow, and a pumpkin man. Eventually, they learn the legend is indeed very real and they soon find themselves up against three supernatural killers.
The Barn is a nostalgic throwback to the horror movies of the ‘80s. It’s set on Halloween night in 1989, and it captures the era with a lot more authenticity than many other similar contemporary horror films. Sometimes it gets a little bogged down with all the “rules” pertaining to its mythology, but that’s easy to overlook considering the filmmakers wear their inspiration (and heart) on their sleeve and have a genuine appreciation and affection for the genre.
There’s a million different ways a low-budget production like this can go wrong. Try to make it campy and it just becomes another disposable sub-Troma movie. Lean too hard into nostalgia and run the risk of alienating modern audiences. However, writer/director Justin M. Seaman finds the sweet spot more often than not.
The impressive body count and generous helping of gore doesn’t hurt either. The highlight comes when the three killers crash a Halloween Hootenanny and make short work of the attendees. There’s eyeball popping, heart ripping, gut ripping, and a cool bobbing for apples kill. Elsewhere there’s arm hacking, severed heads, face ripping, and plenty of slashed throats to go around.
I haven’t seen Musolino and Stout in anything before, but they are quite good. Of course, my favorite performance was courtesy of Linnea Quigley. She plays the town’s religious nut who’s trying to ban Halloween. I also got a kick out of Ari Lehman (Jason from the original Friday the 13th) as “Dr. Rock”, who’s kind of like a mash-up of TV horror host and MTV VeeJay.
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