This is a CoSo #RawReview for BARBARIAN (2022) dir. Zach Cregger. That tag means that it’s my reaction to a movie that I went into with no prior knowledge of, having read no other reviews, before or after viewing it, no trailers, nor reading a synopsis or description of the plot.

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#CoSoHorror #CoSoFilm #CoSoMovies

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In writing this reaction, I’ve looked up some names in the cast list, but other than those names and my own single viewing, all I know from others is what came to me from @SalK who called it “so incredibly fucked up,” which was enough of a reason for me to see it.

SalK was, of course, right.

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So, what is this movie? BARBARIAN is much in the tradition of great horror and exploitation films past, most obviously where it recalls the thematic vision of the late, great Wes Craven, specifically his often-overlooked 1991 film THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS. Similarities to the Craven school go well beyond an obvious plot element that both films share. In Craven’s best works, the seemingly innocent, “gosh-golly-gee” apple pie-eating suburban America...

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(so often these days evoked as a bygone past meant to gain access to the wallets and votes of yearning working-class white people) is overturned to expose its decaying underbelly. So, also, is Cregger here using the sub-levels of a home to expose layers of decay, eventually leading us to the dark heart of the house, shown tellingly in an expositional sequence that flashes back to the Reagan era. In a way, the metaphor is a bit obvious, perhaps even clunky,

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and if the substantial core film were only that, there might not be a great deal of grace—the type that Flannery O’Connor once wrote about—offered to its characters, and by extension, its audience.

Fortunately, the house’s foundations serve as an architecture for the film’s central thesis, which seems to be, in the most immediate sense, whether people are prone to continue repeating their mistakes, or if there is a way out. In this way, the film not only examines the

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corruption within its characters, as well as American society, but it also suggests that there may be a way forward, for some. At the center of this question of grace, then, is the film’s title. To whom does it refer? Is it the mass abductor, rapist, and presumably, serial murderer, Frank (Richard Brake) we see at the genesis of the story? Is it the bestial “mother,” who terrorizes earnest Airbnb guests? Is it the so-called “owner” of the house, played by Justin Long,

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(born to play this kind of dudebro, who along with Brake and Bill Skarsgård, comprised the film’s few actors I recognized) ostensibly wallowing in a stew of his own toxic masculinity? Is it the society, represented most clearly by the police, that turn a blind eye to the evils perpetuated in a run-down black neighborhood after white flight has taken its course?

The lack of an obvious answer to this question allows us to see more clearly what writer-director Cregger is up

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to: after all, what makes a “barbarian?” The term itself is both pejorative and at the same time, conjures the image of a strong and capable figure. Could the title therefore be applied to the main cast’s sole survivor, Tess (Georgina Campbell, in a performance that will make you believe that she is indeed terrified, tormented, and yet somehow conjures the will to, despite every instinct running counter to her actions, deny the path to safety to instead do the right thing—