Barbarian (2022)★★★★☆

Ok, full disclosure, I first saw this movie at a movie theater, on my own, late at night. On top of that, I dropped my phone under my seat, like ALL the way under my seat, sometime during the first half of the film, and had to wait until it ended to sheepishly ask random guy next to me to shine his phone light under the seat so I could retrieve it. Thankfully he was amenable and it was a relatively easy retrieve, but it definitely added a MOOD to the first time I watched this.

And while I didn’t have quite the same mood rewatching it, and some parts of it dragged more than I remembered, it’s still a solid movie. It’s creepy and weird, it’s got some cute and funny stuff and there’s a mostly satisfying ending.

I also love Bill Skarsgård, who manages to exude creepiness (in a nice romantic way??) just by appearing on screen. AND Zach Cregger wrote and directed this! I first saw him in Whitest Kids U Know, and then a couple of single-season 2010s sitcoms, so I wouldn’t have expected horror to be his calling, but I liked this movie and I’m excited to see more from Zach Cregger in the future.

Anyway, this is fun and gory and somewhat brutal… and it turns out patriarchy is the real monster.