Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 Barbarian

 My friend JG - from elementary school holy moly - has been an excellent resource for television and movie recommendations lately.  He insisted that I watch Wentworth and was SO right about that; if you haven't watched that Australian women's prison drama on Netflix yet, GO DO THAT RIGHT NOW.  So when he recommended Barbarian, I was like of course I will watch that.

Tess, in Detroit for a job interview, arrives at her AirBnB to find it double-booked and already occupied by Keith (played by Bill Skarsgard, never not twitchy).  There are (apparently) no available hotel rooms in all of Detroit so she reluctantly agrees to share with him, and they end up getting along and chatting into the night.  Cue creepy noises overnight and doors opening by themselves.  After the interview the next day, Tess returns to the house and ends up locked in the basement because the movie wants her to.  She can't get out the window because the movie doesn't want her to.  Instead, she finds a creepy hidden door, opens it, walks down the creepy hall to a lighted room that contains a stained mattress, a camera, a bucket and a bloody handprint on the wall.  Keith returns in time to free her from the basement but since he doesn't really believe her, goes down to look for himself.  He doesn't come back.  When she goes down after him, she finds a creepy stairway to an even creepier sub-basement.  She finds Keith down there.

Y'all, the movie comprised of the above paragraph is so tense and terrifying that not only was I watching through my fingers, I actually had to stop the movie when Tess first got locked in the basement, read a whole bunch of plot summaries and then finish the movie the next night. My notes from the first attempt read: NOPE CAN'T DO IT.

But this is a tale of two movies, you see, because after Tess finds Keith in the sub-basement, there's a slam cut to a douchebag actor (played excellently by Justin Long) driving his convertible along the PCH.  Which, thank goodness, because it gives the viewer a break from the tension.  There's another slam cut to a flashback to the Reagan years later, before finishing up back in the house.  But here's the thing, once Justin Long's character enters the fray, Barbarian just isn't scary anymore.  It just starts getting more and more out there and even silly.  And the characters make SO MANY stupid decisions that real people just wouldn't make.  It's as though the screenwriters completely changed their mind halfway through as to the type of movie they wanted to make.

The tape measure scene is intentionally hilarious, however.  Also, I will never rent an AirBnB after this.