Zach Cregger’s “Barbarian”

Barbarian (2022)

A fantastic, innovative, layered and scary chimera of a horror story best entered into with as little information as possible

Zach Cregger’s debut solo feature that gets so much right and the root of its success is in the writing (also by Cregger) which does things I’ve not seen before. It starts from a simple premise: Tess(Georgina Campbell) is visiting Detroit for a job interview arriving at night in the rain at her Airbnb only to find someone is already there, Keith(Bill Skarsgård).

As with Jordan Peele, Cregger is also a comedian. As with comedy, timing is everything in horror and it’s no coincidence that the creators of some of the most exciting contributions to the genre have their roots there. Even Stanley Kubrick made Doctor Strangelove before The Shining and John Landis made The Blues Brothers before American Werewolf in London which is one of the few movies to successfully fuse the genres while maintaining dominance with horror.

Barbarian doesn’t spoon-feed the audience and gives plenty of room to put the pieces of the puzzle together for themselves while also holding back on giving us everything all the way up to the end. Campbell and Skarsgård are perfectly cast, the cinematography enhances, and the intimacy of the story makes for what is sure to be a modern classic.