Barbarian is one of those awesome movies that’s got thrills and scares and suspense, but…it doesn’t make any sense.
Which is to say the creators of it are likely making a bet that you’ll be too distracted by the flash and bang and guts and gore appeal of it to notice that the plot doesn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny. The logistics just aren’t there. It starts off with Tess– Georgina Campbell aka BabyBerry (the way certain younger generation of actors resemble an older one, she’s a split imagine of the Ms. Berry) getting to her Airbnb rental only to find that the place has already been let out and now she has to share. It could be worse, though – Tess gets to share the place with Keith, who seems lovely and woke and respectful and all that. Keith is played by Bill Skarsgård, an actor who doesn’t look like anybody, including his famous father and brother. In fact, Bill Skarsgård is awesome because there’s a certain changeable quality to his handsomeness where it can go either way: he can be a legitimately nice guy or a creep. Pennywise, anyone? Anyway, in the light of day, the adorable rental turns out to be the only place standing in a nightmarish burned down neighborhood. That’s just one of the creepy elements, leading up to a spectacularly creepy basement showdown. And I do not use the words spectacularly creepy lightly. This movie has one of the most awesomely terrifying basements in horror movie history. A real beauty…that nightmares are made of. Pivot. A seemingly random scene set at least four decades back with a creepy tall dude stalking a woman. Pivot. AJ played by Justin Long (back from the land of random romcoms, just coms, etc. to his Jeeper Creeper stomping grounds) is driving down a scenic coastal highway when he finds out that he’s been accused of rape. AJ, is an actor and the more we learn about him the more we see how accurate that accusation might be. AJ is unrepentantly scummy, a sh*tshow of a person. And now he’s about to lose all his money is lawsuits, so he goes to Detroit to liquidate some property and guess which property he owns? That’s right, somehow, for some reason, he owns a creepy Airbnb house. And its horrible basement. Cue in further nightmares. Ultimately, it’s monster madness slash survival thing and it’s all very compelling and super fun, but….it doesn’t make any freaking sense. Ok, so now that you know all those things about the movie, you should go watch it. Then come back and read the rest of this review. Again. CAUTION. The following paragraphs will give away some of the plot’s twists and turns. OK? Ok, let’s do this. Why does AJ own a house in a horrible neighborhood of Detroit? How does the place survive as Airbnb ? Does no one ever check the area? Does no one ever check the basement? More importantly, does no one EVER notice that the tenants are going missing? Sure, the cops in the movies are depicted as useless at best and negligible at worst, but the people who come to stay are from other areas. They presumably have families. And no one looks for them? Or are we to believe that the basement mommymonster has never killed before the events of the movie? Why hasn’t anyone checked the basement? Like when the house got sold or any time before or since? How can someone survive in a basement, however vast the basement may be, unnoticed and without seemingly any income or means of getting necessities, for decades? What about two somebodies? And the breeding experiment which seemingly gave birth to the basement’s mommymonster doesn’t work within a timeline. If the mommymonster has been living there for 40 years and she is a result of a series of inbreeding, when would her father had to have started? We’re not talking some missing toes or developmental and/or mental glitches, we’re talking a living nightmare. If the father started in his late teens or early twenties, then why does the flashback feature him 40 years ago (presumably the age of the mommymonster)? If not, then yikes, and the creators of the movie do not understand how DNA works. Where does the mommymonster get milk? Where do they get anything in that basement? Not like she can raid the neighborhood no one is living in, except for one homeless dude. Why hasn’t she ever attacked the cleaners that presumably take care of the Airbnb in-between renters? Or she did, and no one notices either? Why hasn’t anyone come looking for Tess or Keith in the two weeks they’ve been missing? Tracing their stay location would have been easily enough done. There’s probably more I’m not thinking about right now, but those are the main things. If anyone has any good answers, I’m all ears. And yet, despite being a very logical person, I had oodles of fun with this very illogical movie. And you might too. The barbarians are at the gates. Let them in.
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