It’s not quite officially spooky season yet, but if you’re already itching for some great new horror content, then this is your lucky day, as an acclaimed — and totally nuts — entry in the genre just hit theaters this Friday. Barbarian might not have been a movie that has been on many people’s radars before now, but anyone looking for a uniquely scary rollercoaster ride will want to catch this one as soon as possible, to avoid spoilers.
With reviews piling in now that it’s available on the big screen, after premiering at this past July’s San Diego Comic-Con, Barbarian is savaging the competition with its near-perfect 94 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes off the back of 62 reviews (at the time of writing). The user rating isn’t quite as high, but audiences have still reacted positively, awarding it a strong 78 percent.
“Smart, darkly humorous, and above all scary,” reads RT’s critics consensus, “Barbarian offers a chilling and consistently unpredictable thrill ride for horror fans.”
The sole directorial debut of actor and comedian Zach Cregger, Barbarian follows Tess (Black Mirror‘s Georgina Campbell), a young woman who’s come to Detroit for a job interview. When she arrives at the rental home she’s booked in a rundown neighborhood, however, she finds that it’s already being rented by someone else, Keith (It‘s Bill Skarsgard). With no other options open, Tess decides to share the place with the socially awkward but nice Keith.
Sounds innocuous enough, right? Well, suffice it to say things get craz-ee from there, but to reveal anything specific would be to spoil the fun. Let’s just say that Tess will come to realize that there’s something much more sinister going on in her rental home than just a mere booking error.
Many critics are favorably comparing Cregger’s film to the works of Jordan Peele, praising it for its sharp sense of humor and skewering of horror tropes and conventions. Catch Barbarian in theaters now.