About Barbarian movie
Barbarian is a 2022 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Zach Cregger in his solo screenwriting and directorial debut. It is produced by Arnon Milchan, Roy Lee, Raphael Margules, and J.D. Lifshitz. The film stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long
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The plot sees a woman find out that the rental home she reserved has been accidentally double-booked by a man, not knowing of a dark secret within the dwelling.
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Barbarian premiered at San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, 2022, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 9, 2022, by 20th Century Studios. The film received generally positive reviews, with praise for Cregger’s screenplay and direction as well as the cast performances. The film grossed $45 million worldwide on a production budget between $4 million and $4.5 million.
Plot
Tess Marshall arrives at a rental house in the rundown Detroit neighborhood of Brightmoor on the evening before a job interview. However, she finds it has been double-booked and is already occupied by a man named Keith Toshko. Initially unnerved by Keith, Tess warms up to him and decides to stay the night while Keith sleeps on the sofa. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she is shaken to find her bedroom door has been opened, but Keith is asleep and assures her he didn’t touch the door.
The next morning Tess goes for her interview and is warned not to stay in the area near the house. Returning to the house she is chased inside by a homeless man who yells at her to leave. She becomes locked in the basement and stumbles across a hidden corridor, leading to a room with a camcorder, a stained mattress, and a bloody handprint.
Keith returns to the house, frees Tess from the basement, and investigates the hidden corridor. When he does not return, Tess follows him and finds a subterranean tunnel attached to the hidden corridor, where she finds Keith injured. The pair are attacked by a naked, deformed woman (credited as ‘The Mother’) who kills Keith.
Two weeks later, the house’s owner, actor AJ Gilbride, is fired from a TV series over allegations that he raped his co-star. Pressured to sell assets to pay his legal costs, AJ travels to Detroit to inspect the house before selling it. AJ finds the hidden tunnel and tries to measure it, believing it may increase the house’s value. The Mother attacks AJ in the tunnel and he falls into a hole where he meets Tess.
A flashback to the 1980s shows Frank, the house’s original owner, abducting women, whom he raped and kept captive in the tunnels.
In the present, the Mother locks Tess and AJ in a hole. Tess tells AJ that the Mother wants them to act as her children. AJ is dragged away by the Mother, who forcibly breastfeeds him. Tess uses the opportunity to escape the house with the help of Andre, the homeless man from earlier, who warns her that the Mother will come after her at nightfall.
With the Mother distracted by Tess’s escape, AJ finds a room that the Mother refuses to approach. Inside, he finds a bedridden Frank, assuming him to be another victim of the Mother. AJ assures Frank that he will call the police, before finding evidence of Frank’s crimes. Frank kills himself with a concealed revolver.
Tess leads the police to the house, but they dismiss her story and leave as night falls. Tess breaks into the house, retrieves her car keys, and rams the Mother with her car, seemingly killing her. Tess returns to the basement to rescue AJ, who accidentally shoots her with Frank’s gun. The two escape, find that the Mother has vanished, and take shelter with Andre.
Andre explains that the Mother is a product of Frank’s multigenerational incest with his victims. The Mother bursts in kill Andre and chase Tess and AJ up a water tower. AJ loses his gun and pushes Tess off the water tower to save himself. The Mother jumps after her and shields her from the fall. AJ finds Tess is still alive, but as he tries to rationalize his actions to Tess, the Mother revives and kills him. The Mother attempts to comfort Tess, but she shoots the Mother dead with Frank’s gun and limps away as the sun rises.
Cast
Georgina Campbell as Tess Marshall, a young woman staying in Detroit for a job interview
Bill Skarsgård as Keith Toshko, a young man who double books an Airbnb with Tess staying in Detroit to scout locations for his community organization
Justin Long as AJ Gilbride, a sitcom actor
Matthew Patrick Davis as “The Mother”
Richard Brake as Frank, the Mother’s father
Kurt Braunohler as Doug
Jaymes Butler as Andre
Sophie Sörensen as Bonnie Zane
J.R. Esposito as Jeff
Kate Nichols as Catherine
Kate Bosworth as Melissa (voice)
Brooke Dillman as AJ’s mother
Sara Paxton as nursing video narration/assistant / Megan (voice)
Will Greenberg as Robert
Derek Morse as officer #1
Trevor Van Uden as officer #2
Zach Cregger as Everett / the voice of David
Devina Vassileva as a property manager assistant
Kalina Stancheva as a young woman
Production
Zach Cregger was inspired by the non-fiction book The Gift of Fear, citing a section that encourages women to trust their intuition and not ignore the subconscious red flags that arise in their day-to-day interactions with men. He sat down to write a single thirty-page scene that would incorporate as many of these red flags as possible. Cregger settled on a woman showing up to an Airbnb late at night, only to find that it had been double booked, as the ideal set-up for this exercise. He stuck to the rule that if he was surprising himself with his writing, then he has to be surprising his audience. “As long as I have no long plan, then no one could know what’s coming.
Release
Barbarian was originally scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States by 20th Century Studios on August 12, 2022, before being rescheduled to be released on August 31, and later on September 9. Disney reportedly maintained a theatrical release for Barbarian (as opposed to a streaming release on Hulu) due to strong, positive reception from studio test screenings.
CinemaBlend and AMC Theatres premiered the film at the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, where it garnered positive reactions. The film was also screened at the Arrow Video FrightFest on August 29. The film was released on October 20, 2022, in Australia, on October 27 in New Zealand, and on October 28 in the United Kingdom.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 199 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website’s consensus reads, “Smart, darkly humorous, and above all scary, Barbarian offers a chilling and consistently unpredictable thrill ride for horror fans. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “C+” on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave the film a 70% overall positive score, with 54% saying they would definitely recommend it.