A dark, suffocating and sordid atmosphere, intermingled with a very simple and identifiable starting point and a narrative structure that splits the story in half with an axe. These are some of the characteristics of this film produced by 20th Century Studios, formerly Fox and therefore owned by Disney, which arrived here a couple of years ago exclusively and directly to its platform, without passing through theaters despite the excellent performance it had in the United States. Now, we have ‘Barbarian‘ on Netflix.
The story starts with an almost everyday starting point: a young woman traveling to Detroit for a job interview rents a house for the night. But when she arrives, already late at night, it turns out that the house is in a practically abandoned neighborhood and doubly reserved: a strange man is staying there. They both seem to be right and have a legal right to be in the house so, despite being complete strangers, she decides to spend the night instead of going to a hotel. This is just the starting point for a nightmare that will not go as expected.
Especially since the story will soon take a turn in which we will meet a new character with a history also linked to the house. The result is not exactly a story of haunted places, not exactly a fable of urban horrors, although it has something of all that. The person responsible for this mixture of styles is Zach Cregger, director and screenwriter of the film, who although he was professionally trained in the field of comedy, debuted as a director with ‘Barbarian’ and, due to the success, will continue to drive his steps through the genre.
‘Barbarian’ is sustained, despite moments of fooling around with clichés, thanks to the excellent work of the cast: Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgård (known for playing Pennywise in the two installments of ‘It’, and the upcoming Nosferatu in Robert’s adaptation Eggers, who we will see at the end of the year) are in charge of the first section, and Justin Long (another regular in comedy environments but who works perfectly in this drift towards terror) stars in the second half. The less you know, the better: face ‘Barbarian’, a nightmare enclosed within four walls that extracts everything strange from an uncomfortably familiar situation.
