Director: Zach Cregger Screenplay: Zach Cregger Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake Year: 2022
Short-term rentals, where AirBnB is the best-known company, have revolutionized the tourism industry. Beyond all the benefits they brought, they've also become a source of problems — to the point where some cities have banned them outright. The kind of things that can go wrong in this type of rental, where regulation is minimal and human interaction nearly non-existent, has already been explored in other horror films ("The Rental", "Superhost"), but "Barbarian" brings one of the most terrifying, original and best-executed versions of the subject.
In "Barbarian" we follow Tess (Georgina Campbell; "Black Mirror: Hang the DJ"), who travels to Detroit for a job interview and rents a home for the days she'll be in the city. When she arrives, she discovers the property is already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgård; "It"), and the question becomes whether this is a mistake by the property manager or something Keith orchestrated. What Tess doesn't know is that the guts of this house hold a secret far more dangerous than Keith.
During the first act, "Barbarian" doesn't feel like a horror film — it plays more like a thriller. Once Tess and Keith are together in the house, the attention turns to figuring out whether Keith means harm, and writer-director Zach Cregger plays with familiar horror clichés to steer the viewer in one direction and then surprise them with something completely unexpected. And when I say unexpected, I mean completely unexpected.
After the first turn, the film changes tone entirely and introduces a new character who will be crucial for the rest of the development, the outcome, and the philosophical question about what it means to be a good or bad person. I won't go into detail to avoid spoiling the twists for anyone reading this without having watched it; I'll just note that from this point forward, the film leaves the neutral zone and explores extremes. We move out of suspense into scenes of straight horror — with gore included — and into highly effective dark comedy.
What stands out about the director is his versatility to handle multiple styles simultaneously and make them all work in harmony. Cregger is comfortable with suspense, horror, and comedy, and he uses distinct directing styles for the different settings (daylight, nighttime, inside the house, underground) that, despite being sharply different, function as a unified whole. The structure of the film itself is bold: it breaks chronology and forces the viewer to reassemble the puzzle in real time, without the trick feeling gratuitous.
"Barbarian" explores the fears that surround short-term rentals and delivers one of the most creative and entertaining films on the subject. Full of twists, surprises, horror, comedy, and tension, its one minor slip is that in some sections you have to make an effort not to think too hard about the coherence of events to enjoy it fully. Even so, it stands without dispute as one of the best horror films of 2022 — if not the best.
Rating: 9/10
Ending Explained (Spoilers ahead)
The film's sharpest provocation is structural before it is thematic. Cregger spends the entire second act letting us settle into AJ as the protagonist — the charming TV actor whose career is collapsing because of a sexual assault accusation that appears unfounded — only to reveal in the same act that he is exactly the kind of person who would do what he's being accused of. The chronological break isn't a stylistic flex: it's an argument. By the time we learn what AJ actually did, we've already invested emotional time in him as a person, and Cregger forces us to confront our mistake — and the likely assumption that the accusation against him must be false. The real twist isn't what lives beneath the house — it's realizing what kind of person we'd been hoping would survive.
The Mother is the more honest monster, and that's precisely the point. She is what generational abuse made her, with no moral framework available: she "cares" the only way she was ever taught to care, and the violence that follows is pure instinct. AJ has the entire moral apparatus — language, social position, full awareness of consequence — and uses it to calculate his way through the night with the same coldness he likely calculated every previous step of his life. The film isn't drawing equivalence between the two; it's pointing at where horror actually lives in the world we recognize. Both lack morality, but one because she never knew it and the other by choice and convenience. The basement monster is the metaphor; AJ is the reality.
The closing sequence — where the Mother chases AJ after "rescuing" Tess, and finally crushes his head against the concrete — is the thesis question of the entire film: who is the real monster? The creature in the basement, literal producer of the horror we see on screen, acts on instinct and the only pattern she's ever known. AJ acts out of conscious, calculated selfishness, with complete moral clarity about what he's doing. Cregger isn't subtle about his answer — and that lack of subtlety is exactly what turns the ending into one of the most memorable images in recent horror. The barbarian was never the one in the basement.
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