Barbarian, the “twisty” horror starring Bill Skarsgård, has landed a new streaming home in the UK.
The 2022 film, from writer-director Zach Cregger, follows a woman (Georgina Campbell) who finds that her Airbnb has been double-booked. After a tense meeting with her fellow resident (Skarsgård), a dark secret gradually begins to unravel.
Co-starring Justin Long and Richard Brake, Barbarian was a huge commercial success upon its release after grossing $45.4 million against a budget of $4 million, and fans now have the opportunity to view it again after it was added to Netflix.
Barbarian also struck a chord with critics, with the film currently possessing an impressive approval rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes from 210 reviews. In its critical consensus, it called the film a “chilling and unpredictable thrill ride”.
Here at Digital Spy, we dubbed Barbarian as Skarsgård’s best film to date, with our review noting: “The joy of the movie is how it constantly wrongfoots the audience, delivering audacious swing after swing.”
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“Barbarian serves up all the requisite thrills with panache, but it also provokes deeper, longer-lasting reflections,” wrote The Atlantic, while Empire Magazine described it as “wildly unpredictable” and “intensely claustrophobic”.
“As a filmmaker, Cregger seems conscious of embracing and then twisting an audience’s expectations, leaning into certain tropes of the genre before forcefully pushing towards something far more realistic,” wrote The Independent.
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“Scary, funny, brutal, smart, and perverse – this is the stuff that future classic horror midnighters are made of,” noted the Austin Chronicle, while The Wrap praised the film for its “twisty plot” and “playful camerawork”.
Cregger will soon unveil his eagerly anticipated follow-up to Barbarian, with Weapons due to hit the big screen in August. The mystery horror, which features Julia Garner and Josh Brolin, follows a small community after 17 children mysteriously vanish overnight.
Barbarian is streaming now on Netflix.
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Reporter, Digital Spy George is a freelance writer who specialises in Movies and TV. After graduating with a degree in Film Studies and Journalism from De Montfort University, in which he analysed the early works of Richard Linklater for his dissertation, he wrote for several websites for GRV Media. His film tastes vary from blockbusters like Mission: Impossible and John Wick to international directors such as Paolo Sorrentino and Hirokazu Kore-eda, and has attended both the London and Berlin film festivals.