Barbarian (2022)

Barbarian (2022)

Zach Cregger recently made Weapons (2025). I’m hesitating to see it.

He had already directed Miss March (2009), which is far from terrible, with his buddy Trevor Moore. Both of them also star in this pointless film.

With Barbarian, he almost pulled off a tour de force… but he failed! The film is in two parts. The first part is perfect in my opinion. I was captivated by the story, the actors, and the atmosphere, which terrified me. I would like to remind you that to be scared when watching a film, you have to immerse yourself in the atmosphere. Watching a film alone in the dark, sitting close to the screen… that’s how you can get scared! If you’re with friends in the middle of the afternoon, commenting on every scene out loud while eating popcorn… of course it’s easy to act tough, brag and say that no film is scary!

In the second part, we discover a new character, apparently the victim of an injustice… but we don’t have time to really feel sorry for him, because his arrogance makes him an unlikable character. Basically, it’s the second part that ruins the film. It’s the last half hour that destroys all the subtlety, it’s the extreme violence and gore of the last ten minutes that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and makes you want to shout ‘Oh Genius!’ but rather ‘Oh… disaster!’.

The violence is bearable in the first segment, which lasts 42 minutes. In fact, at the end of it, I wondered if it was a single film or an anthology. Then there’s another hour or so of film. Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long do a good job acting. Pretty decent, anyway. I liked Justin Long in Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, which was a masterpiece compared to this one.

If I had to sum it up in a few lines, I would say: A really bad horror film. The beginning seemed promising, but then everything goes downhill and the plot loses all credibility, ending with a finale that borders on the ridiculous. A big fail!

When I see the positive comments, I think we must have all watched a different film. The final scene is so ridiculous that it makes you burst out laughing. I wonder what the deal is with the script? Did the screenwriter write a few good pages and then merge them with a few pages from a Z-grade series? In the end, you could say that nothing works, but the worst thing about it is that it’s so bad that it becomes funny, which was definitely not the original intention.

Cops are often portrayed negatively in this kind of film. But here, it’s still over the top!

The film is relatively incomprehensible on various points. We are not given any explanations, or only very brief ones towards the end, and we have to make do with that. The director must not have put much effort into inventing this far-fetched story.

And what a shame to use ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes in the end credits. It’s crazy to sully such legendary songs. And when the credits roll, there’s another completely unnecessary scene that continues the grotesque and puppet-like ordeal.

It’s always depressing when a film goes from 5 stars to just 2, especially if the beginning is well done but the ending is sloppy. It goes from fairly realistic to totally incoherent. Such a shame…