When you turn on a horror movie, you more or less know what you’re going to get: eerie music, jump scares, suspenseful editing. You also usually know what kind of horror movie you’re getting yourself into: a found-footage movie like Paranormal Activity will have a lot of night-vision, a supernatural movie like The Conjuring will have spooky ghosts, and a classic monster adaptation like Nosferatu will have some great special effects.
But one 2022 movie now streaming on Netflix managed to completely upend expectations to create a horror movie unlike any other: one that’s equal parts hilarious and horrific, classic and cutting-edge.
When Barbarian begins, it’s the classic story of a lone woman, Tess (Georgina Campbell), who checks into her Airbnb only to find a stranger, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), has been booked there as well. As horror viewers, we’re automatically conditioned to be wary of Keith. But he’s not what he seems. He convinces her to stay in the place overnight, and the two actually have a lovely time together. But the next day, Tess gets trapped in the basement, and Keith has to come save her. He’s intrigued by a mysterious tunnel and goes to explore it, but doesn’t return. Tess follows behind him... never to be seen again.
Normally, this kind of cold open would span the first 10 minutes or so, to establish what kind of threat the movie is working with. But not Barbarian. The Tess/Keith scene stretched for 45 minutes — almost half the runtime — before it unceremoniously ends.
All of a sudden, the movie takes us to the Pacific Coast Highway, where TV star AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) is cruising in his convertible before he gets a call: his co-star has accused him of assault, essentially ending his career. Looking to free up money, he goes to liquidate his side hustle: the Airbnb where Tess and Keith disappear. He falls prey to the threat in the basement, too, and then the perspective switches for a third time, flashing back decades and proving just how barbarous this “Barbarian” really is.
This movie has been added to Netflix as part of a collection on Alfred Hitchcock, which includes the British horror icon’s best works and the movies that were influenced by them. It’s easy to see Hitchcock’s fingerprints all over the story: Psycho, like Barbarian, started with a long, drawn-out first act that abruptly cuts to follow another character altogether, and also features a villain with some major mommy issues.
But Barbarian did more than just be influenced by Hitchcock — it’s also influential in its own right. In the 2020s, we’re seeing more and more horror movies play with the form of the horror movie itself, like the first-person slasher In a Violent Nature, the surreal transgender horror of I Saw the TV Glow, or the combination horror and rom-com Heart Eyes.
The story of Barbarian may eventually lead to what we expect a horror movie to look like, final girl and all, but the way it tells the story is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Except, of course, Psycho.
