Barbarian

Late one dark and stormy night, deep in a long-neglected and under-resourced neighborhood in Detroit, a young woman discovers that the AirBnB she had booked is already occupied by a stranger. Against her better judgment, she decides to spend the night anyway, but soon discovers there's a lot more to fear in that house than just an unexpected house guest.

Barbarian is the story of a young woman, alone in a strange city for a job interview, who arrives at her AirBnB in the middle, only to find that a strange man is already staying there. From that point on, she proceeds to make a series of very questionable decisions—some of which involve whether or not to share a house with a complete stranger, others involve whether or not to enter a hidden door in the basement, or what to do upon discovering a hidden room that is lit by a single buzzing fluorescent with nothing inside it but a blood-stained mattress and camcorder, while still others involve whether or not to explore secret pitch black tunnels beneath the basement—and worst of all, all of these decisions, at least in that immediate moment… all seem kinda reasonable. That is, they do at first, until the moment when they very suddenly do not seem reasonable… at which point, they really, really do not seem reasonable at all. Not at all.

But y’know… hindsight and all that, right?

This is a movie where you will find yourself continually shouting at the tv: “What are you doing? You are in danger, girl! Just leave!” But the best part is, this is a film that is well aware that you know there’s danger lurking about, and it uses that knowledge to cleverly mislead you on exactly what and where that danger is… which is really great.

Then, just as the shit is truly hitting the fan, the owner of the AirBnB, a “currently being canceled for allegations of sexual assault” Hollywood movie star shows up at the house, but only because he’s looking for a place to lie low while waiting for the storm of his controversy to blow over. That’s the moment when the film gets to the meat of what it really wants to say, becoming much more impressive than I initially expected, and I was already pretty impressed by the sheer level of creepy terror the film had served up thus far.

It’s all very good. A perfect film for Spooky Season.

Also, some of the things that probably inspired this film are definitely on the list for why Airbnb is an absolute blight on society… after check-out chore lists and cleaning fees, of course.

In the end, Barbarian was a really fun, well-made, and best of all, actually pretty scary horror film, one that I am glad that I didn’t watch at night while home alone. Also, I really appreciated how the film makes no effort to hide the fact that cops and white people only ever make bad situations worse.

Big thumbs up.