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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe film (at first) follows Tess (Georgina Campbell), a woman traveling under unenviable circumstances. It\u2019s dark, it\u2019s rainy, she\u2019s not familiar with the area, and she\u2019s in a bad part of Detroit. All she wants to do is check into her rental home, and wouldn\u2019t you know it, there\u2019s no key in the drop box. But there is a light on inside. It\u2019s a skittish man named Keith (Bill Skarsgard), who claims that he\u2019s the one renting the house this weekend. He offers to share the house, and the out-of-options Tess agrees. But something is off about Keith. He suffers from night terrors, he insists way too hard that he\u2019s not a threat, and he\u2019s played by Pennywise from \u201cIt.\u201d Tess finds her way into the basement, and clearly someone has been doing more than laundry down there. She finds an unlit passage and enlists the moderately-suspicious Keith to go ahead of her to investigate. Something horrific happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story then follows A.J. (Justin Long), an actor plagued by scandal. He\u2019s the owner of the house, but it might just be on paper. He arrives a few weeks later to sell the property, and it very well may be the first time he\u2019s ever set foot in it. He too is driven to the basement, and after a detour upstairs (the comedian in Cregger rearing its head), he goes exploring the darkened, seemingly endless passage. No good comes of it. Then again, A.J. is a huge slimeball and maybe \u201cno good\u201d is too good for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a faint idea from earlier what was hiding in the passage, but A.J.\u2019s exploration fleshes it out more, as does a flashback to the house\u2019s previous owner, Frank (Richard Brake), a sicko from the 1980\u2019s. Exposition from other characters, including local squatter Andre (Jaymes Butler) fills in the rest. The film revolves around the twist of what\u2019s in the passage, but it\u2019s not anything suggested by the setup. I\u2019ll give you a hint like I did last week with \u201cThe Invitation\u201d: the entity is dead-set on treating the characters like something that can be found by changing the I in \u201cBarbarian\u201d to a Y and then dropping five letters from the title, including both R\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve seen a lot of critical praise for \u201cBarbarian,\u201d and I\u2019m sorry to say that I just don\u2019t get it. I think critics just wanted something to recommend amid the traditional August-September dry spell. Yes, it\u2019s a better film than I\u2019d expect from Cregger (whose only other theatrically-released directorial effort earned a dismal 5% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the last act sabotages a lot of what came before it. I can picture Cregger giggling as he was writing the ending, which isn\u2019t as clever or funny as he thinks it is. The good thing about the success of \u201cBarbarian\u201d is that it will afford Cregger the chance to make another horror movie, and hopefully that one can stick the landing. The best thing I can say about this movie is the admittedly-backhanded compliment that Cregger shows a lot of promise and I can\u2019t wait to see what he does next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBarbarian\u201d is rated R for some strong violence and gore, disturbing material, language throughout and nudity. Its running time is 102 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver With \u201cBarbarian,\u201d writer\/director Zach Cregger of \u201cThe Whitest Kids U Know\u201d becomes the latest performer primarily known for comedy to take a stab at the horror… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":54832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1623],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54833,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54831\/revisions\/54833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}