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In Barbarian, young professional Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) checks into an AirBnb in Detroit to discover there’s already a guest there and that the house has been double-booked for the night. Tess is initially and understandably wary of the other guest, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), but ultimately stays the night — with Tess taking the bedroom and Keith crashing on the couch. While she at first thought Keith might be a threat, Tess soon discovers a series of secret tunnels in the rental’s basement that house a larger, even deadlier threat.
While Barbarian adheres to many time-honored tropes of the horror genre, and uses them quite effectively, Cregger deftly subverts many of the genre’s conventions. For instance, the first act is essentially one long dialogue scene between Tess and Keith. It’s a masterclass in tension, playing on our expectations of what a horror movie is supposed to be.
Furthermore, there’s also the fact Keith is played by none other than Skarsgård, who rose to fame playing Pennywise the Clown in the IT remake, which adds another meta layer of expectation about how the interaction will go. We spend the entire scene on edge, so when Tess and Keith’s first conversation doesn’t end with a murder or in an equally gory manner, we’re both disoriented and lulled into a false sense of security. In turn, it makes the reveal of the movie’s actual monster that much more terrifying and surprising.
