This week we cover BARBARIAN!! Is it the surprise horror hit of the year or a confused mess of incomplete ideas?
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Synopsis for Barbarian
Traveling to Detroit for a job interview, a young woman books a rental home. But when she arrives late at night, she discovers that the house is double booked and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to spend the evening, but soon discovers that there’s a lot more to fear than just an unexpected house guest.
Podcast Transcript
Anthony: Alright, so I actually wanted to start this review off because this was a movie I had heard about, and I think you had heard about as well. This movie seemingly has captured the horror zeitgeist and community by the throat and made a lot of money. And the ratings and reviews are in the stratosphere of positivity and reactions. And I’m famously not a horror fan, so it’s not going to be a surprise that I didn’t necessarily love this film or like it that much, but I also didn’t hate it as much as I was expecting. Even during the viewing, even the post-viewing, I was like I kind of should hate this movie because there’s a lot of things that I dislike.
But, as a writer/wannabe filmmaker there are a lot of concepts and ideas that this filmmaker, Zach Kregger, is doing that I find very interesting. I’m not sure if he did it the best way or the right way or to the fullest extent, but he is definitely doing something that is capturing the energy. And I think why everyone is so excited about this movie is not necessarily the quality of it or even the content of it but the surprise of it.
And I think that’s the element that is getting people talking is the unexpectedness and like maybe some are saying that as a euphoric, masterful kind of element. But as a writer, I can kind of see how he wrote this and there is a lot of lack, there’s a lot of dead space, in between the ideas and themes and concepts and the execution of it that I found kind of lacking, to where maybe the common audience goer or the common critic is not paying attention to that. They just had a fun throw ride.