Barbarian (2022) Retrospective Review - The Real Monsters
With Weapons premiering to critical acclaim and box office success and cementing Zach Cregger as one of the most interesting new voices in horror, it feels like the right moment to look back at the film that started it all – his 2022 horror debut, Barbarian. When I first saw it in theaters three years ago, I remember leaving with that rare and delightful feeling that I had experienced something I couldn’t fully predict. It was the kind of horror film that grabs you by the throat, pulls you in close, and whispers, “You don’t know where this is going.” And it was right.
What struck me immediately – and what has only deepened on revisiting it – is how Barbarian operates as both an exceptionally constructed genre exercise and a sharp commentary on misogyny, gendered violence, power, and complicity. Cregger’s great trick is that he uses the familiar mechanics of horror – the shadowy basement, the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time setup, the unexpected switch in perspective – to sneak in something far more unsettling: the reminder that the real monsters are not always the ones hiding in the dark.
The Terror of Ordinary Situations
The first act is a masterclass in controlled discomfort. Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives late at night to her Airbnb, only to find it already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgard), a man she’s never met. Right away, Cregger mines a vein of horror that women in particular will recognize instantly: the uncertainty of whether the stranger in front of you is a threat, the mental checklist of escape routes, and the subtle negotiations of politeness versus self-preservation.
Skarsgard is perfectly cast here, and Cregger knows it. The actor brings with him the residual unease of his role as Pennywise in It, but his Keith is outwardly polite, maybe even a little awkward – the kind of man who offers tea, makes small talk, and insists you take the bedroom. But those gestures don’t erase Tess’s (and our) uncertainty; they just deepen it. We’re left teetering in that liminal space between “harmless” and “dangerous,” and Cregger keeps us there for as long as possible.
This is Barbarian’s first and perhaps most effective thematic thread: the horror of not knowing who you can trust, and the danger that comes with being too trusting in a world where bad actors count on that very tendency.
A Game of Perspective
What could have been a simple home-invasion setup becomes something stranger and more ambitious the moment Tess ventures into the basement. What she discovers – a hidden hallway, a grimy room with a camcorder, and something moving in the shadows – propels us into a very different story.
And then, just as we think we’ve grasped the stakes, the film yanks us out of Detroit entirely and drops us into the sun-soaked life of AJ (Justin Long), a Hollywood actor in freefall after sexual assault allegations derail his career. It’s a disorienting shift, and that’s exactly the point.
AJ is not a misunderstood victim; he’s a man whose casual cruelty is baked into his worldview. Watching him bumble into the same basement we’ve just fled with Tess is a masterstroke – the collision of two characters with radically different relationships to danger. Tess enters the basement with caution, each step measured; AJ marches in with a tape measure, calculating square footage for potential profit. It’s funny, in a dark way, but it’s also horrifying. AJ’s privilege blinds him to risk, and the scene is one of many subtle counterpoints to the conversation between Tess and Keith earlier in the film about just how threatening his presence can be to someone in Tess’s position.
Cycles of Violence
Of course, there is also a literal monster in Barbarian – “The Mother” (Matthew Patrick Davis), a deformed, towering woman born from generations of abuse in the house’s hidden tunnels. She is terrifying, yes, but she is also a victim of the man who built those tunnels: Frank (Richard Brake), a predator who spent decades kidnapping, assaulting, and imprisoning women.
Here Cregger plays with horror’s oldest trick – giving us a grotesque villain – and complicates it by revealing that the villain is also a product of monstrous acts. The Mother’s violence is reflexive, even protective. Her twisted idea of “care” stems from a life in which she has known nothing but captivity and degradation.
Frank, in contrast, is chilling precisely because he is not supernatural, not exaggerated. When we meet him in flashback, the pastel tones of Reagan-era suburbia mask his predation, and it’s easy to imagine neighbors waving as he drives off to commit another abduction. This banality of evil – the way cruelty can hide behind an ordinary facade – is the film’s truest horror.
What ties Tess, Keith, AJ, The Mother, and Frank together is Cregger’s exploration of cycles of violence and complicity. Keith’s tragedy is that he is, in fact, a decent man – but his inability to see things from Tess’s cautious perspective seals his fate. AJ’s tragedy is self-inflicted: faced with a chance at redemption, he chooses selfishness until the very end, literally attempting to sacrifice Tess to save himself.
And Tess? Her arc is the film’s moral center. She starts as a woman trying to keep herself safe in a precarious situation, and she ends as a woman who was willing to risk everything to save another person and who shows empathy to the terrifying monster who is, underneath it all, a woman who has been victimized herself. Tess refuses to perpetuate the cruelty she’s endured, breaking the cycle in the only way that remains available to her: through an act of mercy.
Why It Works
Cregger’s screenplay is full of audacious shifts in tone and perspective, but what makes Barbarian more than just a grab-bag of twists is its control. Each perspective change reframes the story’s central theme: that danger is not evenly distributed in the world, and those who live outside its constant presence often fail to see it at all.
The film is also a small miracle of casting. Campbell gives Tess both vulnerability and resilience, grounding the story even as it careens into outlandish territory. Skarsgard plays Keith with just the right amount of charming awkwardness, never letting us decide if he’s harmless until the story decides for us. Long is remarkable as AJ, turning in one of the most gleefully detestable performances in recent horror memory. And Davis’s physical performance as The Mother manages to be both menacing and tragic.
Visually, Cregger and cinematographer Zach Kuperstein use the geography of the house to great effect, turning mundane spaces into labyrinths of tension. The contrast between the bright, wide-open Los Angeles scenes and the claustrophobic Detroit basement underscores the film’s shifting perspectives, both literal and thematic.
A Lasting Impact
Three years on, Barbarian feels even more relevant. Its horror is rooted not just in jump scares, but in the uncomfortable truths it forces us to confront about who often gets to feel safe and who doesn’t.
It is also, simply, a great time at the movies. For all its thematic heft, Cregger never forgets that horror should entertain.
For being a filmmaker’s debut horror film, it was one of the best films of the decade so far. And as a calling card for Zach Cregger, it’s proof that we’re watching the rise of a filmmaker who understands that the scariest thing in the dark is often the thing that’s been there all along, waiting for us to notice.
With Weapons now in theaters, the trajectory feels clear. If Barbarian was a promise, Weapons is the proof. And if Cregger keeps making films this sharp and fearless, then we’re in for something special – hopefully for years to come.