Reviews

Horror movies, especially in the 21st century, seem to consistently get stuck on the final act. An hour of solid build-up, and then a final half hour running through cliches. Barbarian is the next in line to suffer from this.

There are a lot of positives about this film. Zach Cregger has a lot of talent, and it's all on display in the first 40mins of this film. Tension between two characters who know as much about each other as we do. Is Keith up to something sinister or is it just Bill Skasgard's legacy in movies creeping us out? It's slow and builds gradually and naturally, with excellent use of negative space constantly making you look behind the two characters. The set design is also incredible, the neighbourhood looking post apocalyptic, and you can see influences from Twin Peaks to Psycho to Hereditary. There's also a clever subtext on the tension between men and women in a post MeToo world.

It truly is a great movie, until it isn't. The final act rushes through moments, as if they had a max limit on runtime. The slow creeping tension is gone, characters making unrealistic decisions which aren't explained through their character. Because we really don't know who these people are, AJ getting by far the most background. Even side characters have massive question marks left behind by the movie (why is there a single homeless man hiding out in the neighbourhood yet fully aware of what's going on). There's some commentary on police not believing female victims which just appears and disappears. The Mother becomes just another superhuman creature which chases everyone around. The real villain shows up (side note: his backstory scene is shot brilliantly) and then kills himself with no real explanation on why (if he can't reach his gun how's he been surviving down there). It just seems there was another third act that was 30/40mins longer that they threw out because then the movie would be too long. But The Empty Man proved that being too long isn't always a bad thing if there's still plot to explore.

Overall, Cregger is definitely someone to watch. He shows a lot of promise, and I can't give this film a negative score because of how successful his ambitious moments are. If only he kept his ambition through to the final shot, and we'd be looking at a modern horror classic. Instead, we have another modern horror which can't escape the cliche ending curse..

After watching this film I was genuinely confused. Not because the film is full of twists or ambiguity but because, for all the setup and potential, it ends up being really straightforward and basic.

Firstly, Ethan Hawke is very good. He definitely gives a lot of depth to his character and makes a formidable horror villain. The problem is though, the writing gives none of that to the character. It's just Hawke doing more than what's given. Do we have motivation? No. Do we have depth? No. Do we have anything to actually connect him to the phone? No.

The phone itself being a plot device only is also a massive problem. There's just a magical phone that only he can use (because his mum was schizophrenic or something {also can we stop using schizophrenia as a horror movie trope, it's getting repetitive} and those "powers" were given to her kids because reasons), and the villain can hear use it as well but just leaves it there for fun (who knows, it's never given any background). The way the different kid's advice builds together at the end is great, but it's still just a way the protagonist can escape and nothing else.

Acting is decent, some of the kids struggle but they're kids so I never really rest too much of my opinion on it. There's some nice cinematography, although some shots feel like they come straight from Sinister.

Overall the movie just suffers from a lack of depth. It's not about giving the audience the answers, but about giving the audience enough to care about the characters, to invest in the story, and to fear the villain and the supernatural side. When you see the poster you see two subjects, the title and the grabber. Yet at the end of the film, those two subjects remain exactly the same as when you see it on the poster. So I'm giving it a 5, out of respect to the actors and the technical side. It's just nothing else than a really basic, by the numbers movie.