When a horror movie trades in ramshackle stupidity, it helps for it to have a good sense of humour. Otherwise, you get eyerolls where you could have had cackles, and the film becomes a bit of a chore. Enter "Barbarian", in which director Zach Cregger assembles a pretty excellent cast (Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgard, Justin Long, Richard Brake) and has them more-or-less fumble about uselessly as their lives are imperiled by a deranged and monstrous woman living in the basement of an Airbnb home. You'd think the movie has to be a crazy good time a la "Terrifier 2" or intensely claustrophobic a la "The Descent" but it actually winds up being neither, residing at a halfway point between the two that's not a very satisfying place to be. It's just messy, incoherent and the bad kind of dumb. Not that it's all bad: the makeup and practical effects work here is excellent, even if it's just tarting up a bad movie whose only non-visual point of interest is in the uncertain principles of Justin Long's character (to say nothing of his butterfingers). Everyone else seems to love "Barbarian", though, so what do I know?
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