Barbarian
2022 · Directed by Zach Cregger
Original language: English
- horror
- mystery
- thriller
The story
In town for a job interview, a young woman arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that it has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway.
What it’s like
Cold, slightly sickly night-blue light spills through a rain-slicked suburban street, then gives way to the warm, cramped yellow of a single lamp in a rented house, and the camera stays close and restless, lingering on doorways and the dark gap between rooms. Its sound design leans on creaking floorboards, distant thunder, and a low, pulsing drone that rises when nothing is happening. The mood is claustrophobic paranoia, tipping into dread and then sudden, shocking violence, and the film's grim sexual-assault and abduction material is handled with real weight, so this is not comfortable viewing. Expect brief but brutal violence, a few graphic moments, and sustained unease rather than gore for its own sake. Pacing is deliberately uneven: slow, tense corridors punctuated by sharp jolts and a late-breaking shift that reframes everything before it. The emotional register is anxious and angry, with a young woman's survival instincts pitted against a house that keeps refusing to behave. Best suited to people who want a jittery, late-night horror-thriller with a twisty structure and a sharp feminist undercurrent, not something gentle.
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