The following contains spoilers for Barbarian, in theaters now.
Zach Cregger's (The Whitest Kids U' Know) slasher film Barbarian is poised to become an instant cult classic. Currently sitting at a well-deserved 93 percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, critics and audiences alike are devouring this disturbing yet absurdly comical horror tale. Though the movie boasts a wickedly talented cast (including Bill Skarsgård, the breakout star of the most recent adaptation of Stephen King's It), it has flown relatively under the radar up until its release. With a deliberately reserved trailer, Barbarian manages to preserve each and every one of its many horrifying surprises -- even if it had to mislead future audience members along the way.
If one tried to glean the plot of Barbarian based solely on its trailer, they would reasonably enter the theater with basic, measured assumptions about its plot. Bordering on the cliché, a young woman (a vulnerable and elastic Georgina Campbell) arrives at her Airbnb rental only to find it's been double booked and that she must now either share her living space with an unsettling gentleman (Skarsgård) or brave a dangerous Detroit neighborhood after dark. Presumably, Campbell's character is smart not to trust Skarsgård's character (as he's seen crawling menacingly toward the camera), and she must survive the night against his attempts to torment and/or murder her. It's a tidy well-founded outline to concoct after viewing the trailer -- it's also completely wrong.
Throughout the first half of the film, it's hard to gauge exactly what to think of Skarsgård's Keith. Affable if slightly awkward, Keith goes out of his way numerous times to prove himself trustworthy to Campell's understandably wary Tess, going so far as to intentionally open a bottle of wine in front of her, so she can be sure it hasn't been drugged or otherwise tampered with. The brilliance of how Cregger frames this encounter is that, by quickly and consistently exposing the audience to Tess's headspace, each attempt by Keith to ingratiate himself to her just seems more and more suspicious. Even without seeing the trailer, he seems too nice.
For the entirety of the film's first two acts, it appears as though Barbarian is building up to Keith's inevitable betrayal. Yet, just when it seems like he's about to snap, he's brutally murdered by the movie's true antagonist. Before one can even process this moment -- the inhuman horror that has just disrupted everything the audience thought they knew -- the film essentially restarts itself, now centered on a character almost entirely absent from the trailers.
In hindsight, everything about Keith screams red herring, but Cregger subverts this trope by trying as hard as possible to convince the audience Keith isn't a threat -- he's simply certain audiences won't believe him. It's a bold move to try reverse psychology on an entire audience, but one that pays off. Whether it's a few intentionally out-of-context trailer shots (Keith's frightening crawl toward the camera takes place moments before he's tragically killed) or simply casting Pennywise himself, it's almost impossible to side with Keith before the movie's even begun. Even as Keith claims to be a relatively well-known musician and proves trustworthy at each turn, it isn't until the blood is spilled that audiences are sure of his intentions -- an aspect of the plot that underscores the central idea of the film itself.
Though it's refreshingly simple in its delivery, Barbarian seems at least slightly concerned with the trustworthiness of men. Between Keith's pushy yet misunderstood kindness, AJ's (hilariously executed by Justin Long) not-so-complicated sexual assault allegations, and the unspeakably evil behavior of Barbarian's ultimate villain, Frank (an eerie, nuanced performance from Richard Brake), the men of Barbarian don't look great. The filmmoviecalls into question how anyone -- especially women -- can trust the men around them when they often have ulterior motives, whether it be an "innocent" crush or something far, far darker. Just as Barbarian consistently betrays the expectations of its audience, the men of the film betray the expectations of the people around them. To pull off such subversion in a movie so thematically concise is what makes Barbarian one of the most misleading -- and most entertaining -- films of 2022.
To witness its dark twists firsthand, catch Barbarian in theaters now.