Barbarian (2022, dir. Zach Cregger)

It’s maybe the empty promises of Reaganomics that brought us here, to the further and ever widening of the Great Divide between wealth and poverty, between sanity and psychosis, between genuine good intent and well-disguised clandestine self-interest.

Maybe it’s always been here, and has only gotten more and more apparent as it festers year after year.

Objectification, ownership & the monstrosity of permanent emotional infancy; the ultimate incestuous mutation of diseased ideals.

"There are worse things than her down there…"

And maybe I’m full of beans.

First and foremost, a really fun, deftly handled horror picture that made me sweaty. It has a couple expertly crafted moments of pure terror, too, that made me wanna jump out the window. Can’t really ask much more than that from a horror movie, but not only does this have more to it than its successes as a genre picture, it also puts some fresh spins on familiar tropes.

I was surprised by all the smartly subtle subtextual prodding at work here. I’m not sure it has anything concrete to say on the topics of gender, sexual assault, class, economical and social breakdown (and probably some other things I’m forgetting), but it certainly ignites a lot of questions and a lot of thoughts on those subjects, even while it’s scaring the Hell out of us.

"She just wants you to be her baby."

Yikes.

This goes hard, and veers right to the edge of absolute absurdity. It even teeters over that edge a few times toward its kind of silly finale, but I admired it for going all the way with its reveal. I do wish they’d flipped the identities of the survivors by the ending, as it would’ve been much darker, and I think more in line with the tone and general attitude toward humanity established beforehand. And damn, those tunnel sequences are really frightening. Big time nope.

Wild, tense, smart stuff.

Grade: B+