“Barbarian” (MA) * and a half

ETYMOLOGICALLY, a barbarian (or savage) is someone perceived to be either uncivilised or primitive.

The human contents of writer/director Zach Cregger’s latest fling into the horror genre fall rather short of that definition. Out-of-towner Tess (Georgina Campbell) arriving in a dilapidated Detroit Airbnb that she has rented for the night before a job interview is the film’s principal character whose on-screen behaviour suggests that she lacks basic survival smarts – it’s going to be that kind of movie. 

An old man lying bedridden and helpless in the house turns out to be its original owner Frank, who in the ’80s stalked and abducted young women and held them captive in a network of tunnels, raping them and raising the subsequent children. 

Another, named in the credits as The Mother and played by Matthew Patrick Davis, pops up whenever action in the tunnels begins to pall, has pendulous breasts and lacks clothes, vocabulary, normal human attributes or most of its teeth.

The body count begins with Keith (Bill Skarsgård) whom Tess finds has already rented the house for the night and whose interaction with her occupies Act 1 of the drama. 

In that process, he’s going to defy the Hollywood convention of being rejected by the girl before the pair winds up together in the last reel, by being the film’s first victim.

I found little to admire in “Barbarian”. The tensions don’t hold up, the continuity is often muddled or confused, its thematic intention falls short of its ambitions. It repeats the nasty passages too often. As the plot develops, its sense of same-old-same-old comes to dominate. And it falls short of fulfilling the promise of its name.

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