re: Barbarian

When I finished the movie I was like “ehh it’s okay”. But now that I think about it more it’s pretty freaking stupid and nonsensical. It’s like the director had a good idea for the first act and had no idea what to do for the rest of the movie and threw a bunch of shite at the wall to see what sticks. Then I watched a Q&A with the director and he admits exactly that.

Once Justin Long shows up the movie completely falls apart. I love creature features but this one is lame.

I liked the first half. Then Justin Long shows up and it turns into one stupid wtf after another. The ending is one of the dumbest I’ve ever seen.

Found this thread after just finishing up watching Barbarian tonight.

I echo a lot of sentiment in here about how stupid this movie is. But weirdly though, I didn’t hate it. It was relatively entertaining and sort of fun, it just isn’t very good at all really.

quote:

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I feel sorry for people who need to have everything make sense and be perfectly logical in a horror movie.

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I mean, thats a pretty huge copout for the dumb shite in this movie. I don’t need things to be “perfectly logical” in most any movie, but the second half of this one was just one hilariously stupid thing after another.

The black bum’s explanation of what the monster is doesn’t even make sense. “He used to bring women down there. And then he started making babies with them. And babies with the babies. You make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you end up with something like that.” And he says that lady monster has lived there “some 40 years now.” But the flashback to the serial killer dude appears to be in the 70s era. That’s not enough time to get women pregnant and make babies with babies with babies. Even if you’re raping early teens that isn’t enough time to create a 40s year old monster lady.

And don’t even get me started about how this lady who is basically imprisoned inside and underground her whole life has literal superhuman strength. She rips arms off, climbs vertical walls in half a second while dragging a grown man, literally rips someone’s head in half, gets hit by a car and pinned against a house and walks away unharmed, etc. I mean, I guess it works if you view it as a superhero movie and she is the hero.

But on top of that, the movie is just stupid decision after stupid decision. I realize a lot of horror movies don’t exist without stupid characters. But holy shite, this one went past the point of pure insanity. Tess not peacing the frick out immediately after finding the murder/rape room in the basement was top tier stupidity. There were multiple times when she could have left or even later killed the monster and she didn’t. Same with Justin Long.

The first 40 minutes or so of the movie are REALLY good. Like legit excellent horror and had me on the edge of my seat at times. And despite the movie being chock full of cheesy tropes, I didn’t mind it. And Skarsgard plays such a great “teetering on the edge” good guy/psycho. And I liked that they played him just creepy enough to think he was luring Tess down into the tunnels on purpose as a bad guy, only to then turn it and have him killed off. It was freaky as shite when he was crawling toward her in the dark.

But even him going that far down there alone was just plain stupid. And Tess going alone AGAIN was also stupid. And after her interview she should have gotten the director to drive with her back to get her shite and GTFO as fast as possible (and left Keith a note to do the same).

The second half with Justin Long was just….almost too weird and quirky. I liked that it brought some levity to an otherwise serious movie. But it definitely took away from the horror aspect a bit too much for me.

The whole side plot of JL’s rape accusation felt unnecessary. But with the explanations in the thread about basically male toxicity, I guess it makes sense. And it does go to show that he's sort of a piece of shite who actually DID rape that chick. And that’s also sort of confirmed at the end with he tosses Tess off the water tower.

I agree with the people who said there is no way previous renters wouldn’t have found the rape tunnel and reported it.

And I get that Detroit has lots of crime and the house was in an abandoned neighborhood and all, but the behavior and actions (and inactions) of the cops were possibly the most ridiculous thing in the movie. That was just so overly stupid and unbelievable.

Which brings me to by far the worst part: the ending. So he tosses Tess off the tower and the monster dives head first after her……and somehow lands before Tess does? Both of them are likely dead after that fall, but not only are they not, they are both fine. The monster is still perfectly fine and Tess has a slight limp despite seemingly landing on her back from 30+ feet high. That’s it. Just absolute and pure stupidity, plain and simple.

All that to say, I didn’t hate it. I didn’t particularly like it either, but it wasn’t too bad. Had the ending been better I may have liked it more than I did.

Also, after this and Jeepers Creepers, Justin Long seems to like starring in horror movies with excellent first halves and “completely absurd to the point that it devolves into a silly, incoherent comedy” second halves.

I watched it because I read about it on here. Yeah, it wasn't good.

Not long after seeing this movie, we rented a house in Omaha. The house had a basement and then an even lower level full of a bunch of random junk. The lower level had a door at one end (no idea where it led) But, the first thing I thought of was this movie.

I kept calling it the barbarian door. The rest of the group was like wtf is a barbarian door. I said "just watch the movie".