‘Do I look like some kind of monster?’
While horror films have gradually become more and more mainstream since Get Out, I can’t remember a run of big horror film releases like the one we are currently enjoying in 2022. Halloween Ends, Terrifier 2, Pearl, Hellraiser and Smile have all dropped this October, and there are other releases out there too. One of them is Barbarian, a dark and twisted fairy tale from the mind of writer-director Zach Cregger. Let’s dive in…
When strangers Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgård) find that they have both inadvertently booked the same Airbnb, they decide to hunker down for the night anyway. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose.
I can’t really give you much more than that in terms of plot because, and I can’t stress this enough, the less you know about this movie the better. There are a number of twists and turns and pivots here that ensure that Barbarian will go down as one of the more ingenious horror films to hit in 2022. Beautifully shot and lit by cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, Barbarian has a number of elements that feel familiar, drawing on influences as disparate as Hush, Don’t Breathe, Wrong Turn and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but from these sources, he produces something pretty daring and unique. It helps that the cast do a great job, particularly Campbell and Justin Long who appears as a disgraced director in the second half of the movie, but this is a team effort that sees everyone involved firing on all cylinders.
The surprise financial success of many of 2022’s horror roster hopefully ensures that next year will only be bigger. We are truly living in a golden age of horror movies. Drink it in.