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This article contains major spoilers for “Barbarian” and a mention of sexual assault.

Big-studio horror, at least over the past decade, has seemingly been on the decline more than most film genres. Universal pumps out endless mediocre Blumhouse projects, 2021’s “Halloween Kills” seemingly killed the classic franchise for the seventh time, “The Conjuring” franchise has been six feet under for half a decade at this point, and 2022’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was abysmal. 2021’s “Malignant” was more in the vein of a Sam Raimi film than a serious scare. The 2017 remake of “It” was one of the only big flicks that came close for me, and yet its sequel ended up dropping the ball. I also doubt that most would consider Jordan Peele’s recent Universal outfit “Nope” full-on horror, as it leans more into a sci-fi story with individual terrifying scenes. Bottom line, the state of modern horror in the hands of big-money executives isn’t great, to say the least. Recently, many have turned to more arthouse-oriented horror, whether it be “The Lighthouse,” and “Midsommar”  or, more recently, “X” and “Pearl.” I can’t blame them, considering those movies are far better than anything else in the genre as of late. 

All that being said, director Zach Cregger’s new film “Barbarian” is a refreshing turnaround from this trend. Not that there’s anything wrong with elevated horror, but it’s nice to see a more classical approach distributed by a major studio that happens to be one of the best in years. 

“Barbarian” follows Tess (Georgina Campbell), a woman renting out an Airbnb in Detroit for a local job interview. Upon entering the house, she realizes that somebody else is staying there, a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård), and the two must deal with the fact that the house was apparently double-booked at the same time. Keith starts acting rather strangely toward Tess, constantly offering to pour her drink, somehow knowing oddly specific facts about her profession, and generally acting nice in an uncomfortable manner. It’s very clear what Cregger is going for, and it seemingly gets even more obvious when Tess finds a dirty room in the basement with only a camcorder and dirty mattress.

And that’s where the marketing for this film stopped.

Considering the trailers and commercials only showed what I’ve just described, one might assume that the movie sticks close to that premise, of a young woman trapped in a house with a creepy man. Well, get this: twenty minutes into the movie, Tess and Keith go down to the basement to investigate. Upon finding a hidden passageway, Tess grows cautious, naturally, while Keith doesn’t see anything wrong with it. As Keith descends further into the passage, Tess gets increasingly worried. She eventually goes down to find him, when all of a sudden, some sort of creature appears out of nowhere and bashes Keith’s head in until he’s dead.

When the movie begins, it sets up an obvious, horror cliché antagonist for the audience to pick up on, only to kill him off twenty minutes in and change directions completely. Yep, turns out Keith just was a nice dude who happened to go about conversations in a semi-creepy way. Oh well. Keith, you shall be missed.

But even after all of that, the weirdest is yet to come. After Keith’s death, the movie suddenly cuts to a man named AJ (Justin Long) driving on a sunny road in California. He’s a TV actor who recently shot a pilot for a new show, and receives news that his costar is accusing him of sexual assault. As a result, the network is dropping him and the show. It’s strongly implied later on that these allegations are well-founded. AJ begins to lose all his money in a surprisingly quick amount of time, before realizing the only thing he can do is liquidate what assets he has left.

One of those assets? The Airbnb Tess and Keith were staying at. Naturally, that’s AJ’s first stop on his trip to sell his properties. When he gets there, he finds the basement and entrance to the passageway open. Unlike Tess and Keith, however, AJ sees this as an opportunity to add more square feet to his property listing. Not noticing the many red flags around him, the same creature that killed Keith appears once more and kidnaps him. 

What is this creature, you may ask? Honestly, it’s kind of gross and a little too disgusting for The Argus in my opinion, but for the sake of this article, let’s just say someone took a deformed zombie and gave it intense motherly instincts. If this is too strange for you, tap out now; this definitely isn’t for you. But I digress. The creature is quite the display of some pretty cool prosthetics, so props to the team that created it.

So after going into this film completely blind, I’m proud to say it certainly paid off. It’s also one of the only horror films I’ve seen where I genuinely did not know what was going to happen throughout. Now, by no means is “Barbarian” perfect. The characters are, at times, incredibly stupid to a point where it’s unbearable, and there are several pacing issues that stick out like a sore thumb.

All that being said, when this movie hits, it HITS. And I mean like a brick to the face hits. The moments when I was staring at the screen, silently whispering “what the actual fuck am I watching” to myself were unforgettable. In the end, “Barbarian” isn’t the best horror movie ever, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most memorable studio-made projects in recent years. Its marketing was genius, it’s genuinely scary (and kind of funny at times), and it gives me hope for larger Hollywood studios to put out more fruitful original horror projects in the future.
Nate Wheeler can be reached at nwheeler@wesleyan.edu.