Barbarian

 

The horror film genre is so done by now that filmmakers wanting to enter the field must do more than amp up the gore. They must think deeply about story and what the impalings, decapitations and eviscerations mean, and to my mind they MUST mean something.

Zach Cregger's refreshingly unhinged Barbarian doesn't just settle for the urp factor or wallow in mad violence but takes the viewer through a finely tuned and deliberately paced symphony of shocks, in three movements, that is more allegory than chiller.

The first features the British TV actress Georgina Campbell as Tess, a documentary researcher in Detroit for a job interview. She discovers she's been double-booked in a B&B already occupied by horror A-lister Bill Skarsgård (It). Despite our expectations about this frugal traveler nightmare, the night passes relatively peacefully but with the new day comes new revelations and horrors.

The second movement features Justin Long as a Hollywood project developer accused of sexually assaulting a co-worker. He owns the house in Detroit and comes to the city to sell it to pay a lawyer but finds Tess and Keith's belongings still in the house. He explores and follows the two into a warren of dark caverns where lurks God-only-knows-what, armed only with flashlight and a deboning knife.

The third movement is set in the '80s and features the house's original loner owner, Frank (Richard Brakes), who is shopping for plastic sheets and diapers for a home delivery.

Cregger folds all of these elements together into a beautiful origami of dread.