Yes, this is not the 1999 mini series. I’m shelving the mini series and I’ll be coming back to the year 1999 because there’s so much more to delve into than four weeks worth. Also, I feel l need to do a public service for issue 50 (!!!) because if there is ANY movie with Bill Skarsgård in it that you should be watching this week, it’s this one.
Spoilers, minimal but present, like the underlying sense of dread you feel when you check into an Airbnb where the vibes are palpably Not Right.
Barbarian (2022)
Written and directed by: Zach Cregger
Starring: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, et al.
Running time: 102 minutes
Original release date: July 22nd 2022 (San Diego Comic Con premiere), September 9th 2022 (US release)
“nope”
Barbarian felt like one of the first proper word-of-mouth cinema hits post-pandemic. With a marketing campaign that stayed deliberately vague (oh WHAT LUXURY) and increasing whispers that you absolutely had to go in without knowing anything more than the most basic plot details, it had the distinct sense of something properly exciting.
And while I am very bad at heeding spoiler warnings (yes, I did go in fully spoiled), it still was properly exciting to see Barbarian on a big screen - and it allows me to go against the grain in this edition of One Good Scare because while the build-up for this one is all dread (my beloved), the moment itself is a genuine honest to fuck jump scare for the ages.
Everyone, meet Tess!
the set-up
On a dreary, rainy night, Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell, who is excellent and needs to be in more horror movies ASAP) arrives in Detroit. In town for a job interview the next day, she’s booked a rental house on a seemingly quiet suburban street. Soaked in rain and dragging a massive suitcase, she opens the key safe and is alarmed to discover no key.
She is even more alarmed to discover that while there is no key, there is a Keith (Bill Skarsgård), a seemingly charming young man who tells her that he had also booked this house. Tess, quite rightly, is on high alert, and while Keith manages to somewhat reassure her that he is an okay guy with no ill intent, he completely accepts that this is a less than optimal situation and offers to sleep on the couch.
Tess locks her bedroom door, but is shaken when she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds it open, footsteps audibly retreating. Keith, who is fast asleep, is woken up by Tess and assures her he was not the one to open the door. The next day, Tess goes for her job interview and is cautioned to stay on guard as the neighborhood she’s staying in is under heavy urban decay.
When Tess returns to the house, an unhoused man chases her inside, yelling at her to leave. Tess accidentally locks herself in the basement and stumbles upon what may as well be a giant red flag waved before her: a hidden corridor, which leads to a grimy room, bare but for a camera, a bucket, a gross stained mattress and a bloody handprint.
Keith comes back and manages to free Tess from the basement - but despite Tess warning him not to, he goes to investigate the hidden corridor.
And does not return.
the scare
Vulture’s Alison Willmore describes the scene that follows as nailing the horror of knowing better. Tess has already been on guard due to the situation with Keith unexpectedly being there, and has tried to warn him off because she’s already discovered that something is very wrong here in this house. But she wants to help Keith. And despite every instinct screaming at her not to, she feels she has a moral obligation to help this man. So, she goes after him.
And promptly discovers that the secret passage in the basement HAS A SECRET PASSAGE (not since Roxxxy Andrews tore off her wig to reveal ANOTHER WIG underneath was I so gagged, dear reader). With her phone flashlight on, standing on top of the second secret passage’s staircase, she calls for Keith, and when he answers, she casts one more look back into the light and safety of the basement before descending. She is a good person. She wants to help him. She knows whatever is happening here is not a good thing and yet she still goes after him because she cannot just leave this man to his fate.
Trembling, with her shaky breaths the only soundtrack, she treads lightly into the darkness, the light of her phone only illuminating more and more warning signs. Finally, she finds Keith, injured but alive, and she begs him to come back to the basement with her. They argue, tensions are rising, voices are rising and just as you yourself as a viewer start to feel overwhelmed with tension, a PIERCING SHRIEK rips through the corridor as SOMETHING bolts towards Keith, grabbing his head and smashing his skull to shit as Tess watches, screaming in terror.
Keith’s lifeless body (and PULVERISED skull) drops to the floor as the camera pans up a naked, twisted body before it screams as Tess shakes in horror.
why it works
Because before you even have time to process what you’ve just seen, Zach Cregger immediately cuts to what feels like an entirely different film. You get no answers (yet, at least), you get nothing because we are now following AJ (Justin Long), an actor on his way to… somewhere, driving in his car on a sunny day.
Cregger essentially has cut the film into three parts - the story of Tess will meet with the story of AJ (who we quickly learn is an AWFUL man) later on, but at this point you don’t even know if she’s still alive. You don’t know what that creature was, you don’t know anything more than “Keith: dead, Tess: unknown, basement: JESUS FUCK”. For the next fifteen to twenty minutes, you will be left to linger on what happened without a clear resolution.
And the scare itself is also executed so well. You hear the creature (how can you not, it’s like a fucking banshee screaming a portent of your death) before you see it, and even when you see it you’re not sure what you’re looking at. Your brain scrambles to process while Keith’s head gets smashed to pieces, and when that pan up the creature (who we later find out is known as The Mother) and you see the full body, you’re still not sure. Cregger leaves you to sit with that unease, trusting you to connect the dots you can connect as AJ’s story plays out.
It’s a remarkably confident debut feature, and one that I will most certainly dive deeper into in the future because it’s worth exploring. All I’ll leave you now with is this: seeing Barbarian in a cinema was nothing short of cathartic. And again, if you seek out any film featuring the strangely handsome visage of Bill Skarsgård, let it be this one: an original, daring and genuinely fun movie.
*yes I am shading The Crow 2024, why do you ask
I really liked this one. The backstories are engaging and it's both terrifying and weird.
And yes, I watched it because a friend to me to.
I really need to catch up with my horror movie watching and this one is top of the list. Halloween is coming so time to make up for lost time I reckon 👍🏼