Two strangers explore the basement of their Detroit rental home in this gleefully twisty horror movie by Zach Cregger.
“Barbarian,” a gleefully twisty horror movie by the writer-director Zach Cregger, is both a product of modern times and something of a throwback.
Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgard) meet-cute when they turn out to be the victims of a double booking scam, deciding, against the smitten Tess’s better instincts, to share the rental. The house, decked out in furniture straight out of West Elm, would seem innocuous enough, but it’s also located in the middle of an abandoned, post-apocalyptic-looking Detroit neighborhood whose only apparent inhabitant is an unhinged homeless man who terrorizes the streets.
As expected from this kind of haunted-house thriller, the doors seem to open and close on their own, leading Tess to the one place any horror buff will know means trouble: the basement, where hidden passageways multiply and abominable crimes make themselves known.
Cregger sets up dozens of clichés and pulls them in genuinely surprising directions, brandishing his touchstones: American horror films of the 80s and 90s in the vein of Wes Craven. The scares are tempered by a comic punching bag courtesy of Justin Long as a sleazy Hollywood director who pays a visit to his Detroit property after sexual assault charges drain his bank account.
Cregger isn’t as concerned with making bold political points as he is with orchestrating a snappy spectacle that goes a mile a minute. #MeToo, gentrification, the brutal underbelly of the Reagan era — all these elements fit like puzzle pieces into a broader nightmare that lets the context speak for itself. “Barbarian” is all the more creepy — and fun — because of it.
Barbarian
Rated R for nudity, bloodshed and sexual assault. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
