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[Barbarian] is a horror movie you should see on HBO Max now (OPEN SPOILERS AFTER OP)
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr89pmKrqkIIf you can resist the urge, don't watch the trailer.
In fact, for the best possible experience, stop reading this thread right now and just go watch this movie. It's better when you don't know anything about it. The only thing I'll say in this OP is to give a trigger warning for heavily implied (never shown) SA and child abuse.
If you're the kind of person that isn't bothered by knowing what to expect, then read on.
Barbarian is a horror movie directed by Zach Cregger, former cast member of Whitest Kids U'Know. Seriously.
It stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long.
The movie was made on a shoestring budget. Just $10.5 million. There aren't any big blockbuster kinds of effects. There isn't a big star-studded cast. There isn't a sequel hook or an existing IP.
So why should you go see this movie?
Barbarian is the kind of horror movie that both delivers the goods when it comes to the moment to moment scares/thrills and makes you think after the movie is over and you have internalized the core message it tried to convey.
What's the core message?
The privilege and poor behavior of men, even well-intentioned men, causes misery to spiral out and affect others, specifically women, disproportionately.
Is there a villain/monster?
Yes, but it's not so clear-cut as that. In fact, the "monster" in this movie is just one more victim of the bad behavior of men, and triumphing over the monster is not something to be celebrated; in fact, its very existence is a tragedy.
Are there jumpscares?
Only a couple. They are front-loaded. A few peppered in early to put you a little on edge; for the rest of the movie, the social/psychological creep factor rises until the denouement.
Other comments:
This is a movie that plays with your expectations and knowledge of tropes and plays around with/subverts them.
Bill Skarsgård is probably the biggest name here and most know him as primarily a villain/monster from his work in IT or Castle Rock. He's arguably the nicest guy in this movie, but look beyond the surface. When Tess finds a creepy secret room with a filthy bed and a camera, she's running for the door, but he stops her and asks her to stay while he goes and checks. If he had simply believed her, he would have survived, and she would have been spared a lot of pain and suffering.
Justin Long is mostly seen as a doof or nice guy in his work, and the movie at first makes you think that's where it's going with him here as well. His first scene is him being a dork driving along the coast. And then it's slowly revealed that he's an enormous piece of shit. Later in the film, he meets a character that's arguably even worse than he is, and he gives a monologue about how he has to try to be better. But the second consequences are coming for him, this is all completely thrown out the window and he's still an enormous piece of shit.
Bill Skarsgård is probably the biggest name here and most know him as primarily a villain/monster from his work in IT or Castle Rock. He's arguably the nicest guy in this movie, but look beyond the surface. When Tess finds a creepy secret room with a filthy bed and a camera, she's running for the door, but he stops her and asks her to stay while he goes and checks. If he had simply believed her, he would have survived, and she would have been spared a lot of pain and suffering.
Justin Long is mostly seen as a doof or nice guy in his work, and the movie at first makes you think that's where it's going with him here as well. His first scene is him being a dork driving along the coast. And then it's slowly revealed that he's an enormous piece of shit. Later in the film, he meets a character that's arguably even worse than he is, and he gives a monologue about how he has to try to be better. But the second consequences are coming for him, this is all completely thrown out the window and he's still an enormous piece of shit.
I'll probably do a bigger write-up on this film later with more of my thoughts, but for now, you should all just go watch it. And then post your thoughts. It's the movie of the year for me. I know we have an existing movie thread but I feel this one deserves some special attention.
joshofalltrades on
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I did have some issues with how The Mother is portrayed. It seems kind of like the movie wants to have it both ways: it wants her to be a grotesque and fearsome movie monster, but it also wants to pull the rug out and have her be a pitiable victim. I think maybe they went too far in making her appear "monstrous". Ultimately I think this movie is interested in being a horror spectacle first, and social commentary second, so it's not a huge problem, but I do kinda feel like "Make you scared, then make you feel bad for being scared" is kind of a cheap trick. I do think it's interesting, and I'm sure not a coincidence, that when AJ first finds Frank, he assumes that Frank is the victim and pities him, but never considers that possibility for The Mother.
I gotta say the "scariest" detail is the stack of tapes and all of the labels on them, blech.
And yeah, AJ being all “no don’t shoot” with Frank but “kill it with fire” with the Mother is a great way of demonstrating the male mindset that victims of male toxicity are less important than the men themselves.
I need to watch the movie again with your point in mind about the Mother, but I think what could have been a cheap trick mostly works because it plays on our tendency to make incorrect or incomplete assumptions without having the full picture of what happened. If that wasn’t a major theme of the film I would probably agree, but I think it’s okay for there to be a subversion of expectations there with a bit of complexity thrown in.
After all, it is a horror movie at its heart. YMMV on if the monster is as scary as the thesis at its heart, but I don’t think it is beyond a surface level.
There was a scene where Tess is trying to GTFO of the basement, but AJ has let the door lock behind him. And I leaned over to my wife and said, “Break the glass in the window! Just get out of there!” and she did exactly that thing like a second later. I really appreciated that the protagonist of this film was intelligent despite her altruism getting her in trouble, and that the reason her intelligent decisions weren’t always going her way was because of the men being… men. The theme was very cohesive and made sense for the story even with the more unreal elements of horror present.
and uh; that's not a message I agree with and I think the kind of thing that's encouraging all these nutter alt right incel groups.
The core message of the movie isn’t “all men are evil”
It’s “all men have privilege, and if they aren’t careful with it women get hurt”
There definitely are evil men in the movie, but Keith is there to serve as an example of a man that isn’t evil, just ignorant of his privilege and his big failure is not believing a woman about something being seriously wrong
Now, finding another hidden door and exceptionally creepy stairs into the dark and just wandering down them without saying anything? After finding the torture cell? That's just asking to get murdered.
Sure but I could definitely see a “good” guy, being so taught implicitly by our society, to also feel a sense of obligation to “protect” women by checking the torture chamber out
Plenty of time to do that when the cops get there IMO, but I see what you’re saying.
One thing I was unclear about was how the two people booked the same rental for the same time, and that the managing company had no record of either of them. At first I thought that was going to lead to this house being some sort of trap that’s set for people, but instead it seems more like a commentary on these businesses not really paying attention as long as they get paid.
Also, I’ll have to check the credits, but I was pretty sure that Bill S. also played the part of the scary woman. The bone structure of the face looked almost identical to his during some close up shots.
Update: not Bill. The mother was played by Matthew Patrick Davis
I mean Keith also gets hurt.
Both them men in the story think they are invincible, but the thing that is a danger to the woman is just as much a danger to them. Tess survives contact with her for a lot longer because she knows how to be afraid.
I got a Parasite vibe from the underground stuff.
The movie does such a good job teeing you up to suspect Keith is up to no good, and then lets you slowly come to the conclusion that's not the case, and then just lets you dangle there for just long enough.
But this is the tiniest of nitpicks.
It only doesnt work on you because of the perspective of watching the movie. In real life is a different story. And if you wouldnt have done what she did, does that not put you in the camp as Keith?
Ehhhh. Yes and no. Yes, I have the privilege to not just assume a homeless black man wants to stab me or whatever. No, I’m not quite in the same camp as Keith because his big issue was not believing a woman without seeing things for himself.
It’s a point well taken, and I can’t say for sure how I would react if a man was shouting at me in a neighborhood as sketchy as that one, but I would rather not live my life like I have to fear every homeless person of color.
However he does more or less ignore her panic
As a Detroiter, that kind of put me off of the rest of the movie. It's 2022 and we're still undoing damage Robocop did about s c a r y d e t r o i t.
Brightmoor wasn't that nice in the 80s, and was recovering by the 2010s. The empty city blocks elsewhere were largely eminent domained or condemned years ago since Detroit couldn't keep supplying utilities to the one or few homes left in a dilapidated neighborhood, and the burned homes were demolished.
I heard a similar comment on the thread for this movie on Reddit. Aside from Barbarian and Robocop, you also had Don’t Breathe and It Follows set in Detroit.
Detroit is scary because it’s full of Lions.
However, visitors are largely safe, as the Lions rarely win.
I loved how much tension they mined from a double booked air bnb!
It was also a movie about sexual violence, yet did not depict any sexual violence directly (though we were acutely aware of what had happened to the victims)
I think him calling tess 'little girl' was a deliberate choice to make him see more menacing.
She's standing on the porch in the beginning, looks around, gets in her car. She meets Keith, goes inside, asks to see his reservation. She locks the doors. She takes a photo of Keith's driver license.
She does the whole Raiders of the Lost Ark mirrored light.
When she's captured, she figures out what Mother wants (just act like her baby).
Her only 'mistake' is going back and trying to help people. People she just met. It's the answer to when you're screaming at a horror character to 'just get out of the house!'
It drew audible "holy shit"s out of me on multiple occasions, most prominently when the mother tore the dude's arm off and beat him to death with it.
Tess was one of the best horror protagonists ever. She did pretty much everything I would've done, which was very satisfying to watch, especially contrasted with AJ being a fucking dimbulb.
I like this trend of horror movie cops being actively unhelpful. Or rather, completely accurately portrayed.
Super good balance of fun spook with a bit to think about, just as the OP said.
Honestly, this interpretation of the core message comes across really fragile to me and shows reluctance to absorb critical examination of aspects privileged groups without getting super defensive and just going "well, I guess we're all just bastards no matter what we do then"
Does the movie show a justifiable fear of staying in a strange house with a man she doesn't know, and does it present that fear as reasonable? Yes, and it should be easy to see why it would be, she is quite vulnerable there. Interestingly, the movie actually makes the point to show that HE is quite vulnerable to HER as well, but his general sense of safety and privilege doesn't seem to allow him to see that (also, his life experience, his job/art is based out of places like that).
It also shows that without that guy being evil, he puts her in danger because a general discounting of her experiences and fear. And honestly, that part comes across believable to me (until he goes past the murder basement into the tunnels, it kind of lost me there). Its a good reminder that for some of us to have the privilege to be white, able bodied, perceived as male, we will actually have blind spots to the dangers of the world, and some of the best ways to fill in those blind spots is to be willing to listen to the fears of those whose senses are more acutely atuned to that stuff.
https://www.gq.com/story/barbarian-movie-justin-long-interview/amp
Also, the breastfeeding scene was supposed to be worse in the script. The Mother grabs a rat that’s scurrying by, bites its head off, masticates it, and then feeds it baby bird style to AJ, directly into his mouth. Which Justin Long was apparently down for and they even filmed, but was too awful to include in the final picture.
Honestly, the breastfeeding was horrifying enough.
The guy's own surprise and ignorance that he'd done anything wrong was enough for me to think maybe he was innocent. Even though there's no benefit to her making it up - it tanked her own opportunity too, of course it was true. I couldn't just believe the woman was telling the truth. So. That sucks.
But I was ok with that and even with different casting I would have figured on his true character because of how Act I played out.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
It even sets him up for redemption and gets you to fall for it again!
Haha you certainly have a type! Can't stand the kind of sensitive boy-next-door guys ehh?
Krasinski is a stealth chud but otherwise it's hate what you are in some ways.
Except I'm way funnier then those three fucks, God.
Come Overwatch with meeeee