With the awful release patterns of things coming out in England sometimes the same day and sometimes multiple weeks, or months after a film has already had a full release cycle in the U.S, it can be the case more often than not that I come to a film with deeply inflated expectations. For as much as I avoided as much as I could about Barbarian, I still knew that by all accounts according to the crowds it was a wild ride with many shifts, many quote-un-quote ‘wtf moments’ and that it was one of the sicker and better horror films the year so far that has been wonderfully stacked with fun and exciting horror releases. Well Barbarian managed to live up to a lot of these expectations and actually remained one of the most fun theatrical experiences I’ve had in a while.
The film Barbarian is one that many have stated over and over now in critical pieces that it’s very hard to talk about without discussing plot elements and in a way that is true and leads to the sort of discussion that I think looms over this film for me; is the majority of the enjoyment from not knowing where things will go? Will this film be just as enjoyable on a second watch? I think for sure certain elements of it will be, in particular it’s middle act, which is by far the strongest part of the film. However overall there is a ‘wtf’ aspect to the proceedings that overall I feel could be a little lost on repeat viewings, naturally. But at the end of the day it comes down to more what is the film going for as a piece? Sure, it’s marketed as a terrifying horror film, but as I will conclude later in my summary, for me the film only had a few truly scary moments and at a certain point shifts into an entirely different realm of horror that does on purpose or not deflate the tension and horror that worked in the first act. I get the sense the film is gleefully vignette-based and it is with these vignettes varying in tone and style and presentation that the film finds it’s messy and unwieldy structure. The great success of the film is that all of these vignettes are enjoyable on their own and as a whole come together fairly well. The film is written and directed by Zach Cregger in his first foray into horror after a predominantly comedic career. The dark comedy of the middle act of this film and the subversive nature of it is by far the strongest stretch and this is not to say that Cregger’s venture into horror is un-successful, it’s not entirely, but on the other hand it’s nowhere near as successful as his comedic roots that he injects in this film too. Overall Cregger is a sure-handed director and the film plays with many different styles all successfully, it’s more so the overall handling of tones where the film feels a little un-cohesive. Cregger on the other hand as a writer fills this mostly visually horrific film with some really great and well-judged dialogue sequences, that I left noting mentally as the film’s strongest element.
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| Credit |
Zach Kuperstein’s
cinematography and the editing of Joe Muprhy helps bring Cregger’s visceral presentation
to the screen with a very solid grasp on the ever-shifting ways the film presents
itself. All elements creatively are bound together no matter where the film
goes and indeed it leads to a nice cohesion that makes the nature of the beast
a still successful one. Performance wise the film too has a triptych of performances
that manage to balance all elements of what Cregger is intending to bring to
the screen. Georgina Campbell is our first character we meet and does a great
job with balancing realism with eventual deeply dark horror. Campbell in the
first act is effectively in a two-hander sequence with Bill Skarsgard, who is
equal parts shifty, unsettling and attractive. Campbell and Skarsgard both
manage to balance very well the overall goal of Cregger’s dialogue which is the
sickening balance of awkward romance and real life fear that plagues most people’s
initial interactions, specifically the female centric terror that lies thematically
at the core of the film. However the film belongs to Justin Long, who is so intensely
great in this film it really cannot go without saying to what extent he steals
the entire feature. He is complex, hilarious and unnerving and gives Cregger
the perfect performance to support the sudden shift he chooses to make. I really
can’t praise the brilliance of Long’s turn here enough, there is a real
freeness and suspension to the hands of the director that as I’ve said many
times makes the Long-focused middle act the film’s certain best stretch.
An ever-shifting 7/10 that doesn’t necessarily build itself on twists, but rather sudden shifts, that make this a thrilling and shocking horror feast full of a ton of great sequences and indeed ‘wtf moments’ if that is what you’re after. However it’s with the films extended dialogue sequences and with it’s vignettes from a different time, and certainly with it’s extended detours with new characters, that the film is at it’s best. This for me wasn’t actually a very scary film… but it was unsettling plenty and one of the funnier dark comedies I’ve seen in some time, featuring some laughs that will stick with me most definitely. Barbarian kind of has everything, in a messy way rather than a concise way, but in a way it’s this unruliness that makes it the ride it is.
P.S. From my review of the abysmal Smile… Can we stop the trend of using a popular 50’s or 60’s pop song after our harrowing horror films. Again with the choice of bloody Lollipop I felt like I was in a parody film commenting on this weirdly frequent decision to have pulsating drone score reach a screaming climax over a still frame close up on our lead, only to cut to black and then…. “doo-bop-ba-doo-bop”. On the other hand when its good and the choice is perfect as was the case with Barbarian, the film left me with one last belly laugh and a closing moment perfectly tuned to the film’s incredibly specific tone.
- -Thomas Carruthers
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