Barbarian (2022)

Top comments

1. 

   Scream1008

   How can someone say that the subplot about Justin Long’s character’s

   rape allegations

   doesn’t matter or has no bearing on the rest of the film?

   It’s directly referenced in the end of the film, where after he throws the main character off of the water tower and realizes she’s still alive, attempts to gaslight her into believing she slipped? It’s the concept of his trying to say his accuser “wanted it” brought back to hammer home that this isn’t a good guy.

   1 year 5 months ago
2. 

   Forzelius

   I love it when films do a mid-180 like this. Don't see it very often and when executed successfully, it can provide a truly surprising watch. Something that is really lacking in cinema these days. 1 year 5 months ago
3. 

   Siskoid

   I love the way Barbarian starts. A woman goes to an Airbnb and finds a man already staying there, victim of a booking screw-up. They decide to be room mates for the duration, but can she trust him? Everything is designed to raise your hackles up, especially if you're a woman, and I wish this had been the movie. Not that I don't appreciate the pivot, or indeed, both pivots, but it does suddenly become something else. Ultimately, while Barbarian has a very strong creep factor, and has original ideas, it's just trying to say too much at the same time. There's the #metoo movement, the different safety perspectives of men and women, Detroit as a decaying America wrapped in the devolution of the star creature, the wages of the Reagan era's sins, motherhood and thus perhaps a notion of female support vs male "support", and as a friend of mine pointed out, a possible play on ever more corrupted levels between the stories within the structure. How does it all fit together? Not as well as it wants to. I like all the parts separately, but kind of wish it had been three different films. 1 year 5 months ago

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