4 Years Later, This 10/10 Thriller Is Officially Finding New Life on Streaming

Among the ever-growing list of Jordan Peele acolytes who prove that sketch comedians make surprisingly great horror directors, Zach Cregger has quickly staked his claim. Following last year’s critically-acclaimed, Weapons, and the highly anticipated Resident Evil adaptation coming out next month, Cregger — who first came to attention as a member of comedy troupe Whitest Kids U’Know — has now made a name for himself as one of the best horror filmmakers working today.

However, while Weapons acted as proof that his initial success wasn’t a fluke — and, in many ways, actually elevated the standards of what can be expected from him as a filmmaker — the only reason he was able to make it the way he wanted was because of the breakout success of his solo directorial debut, Barbarian. Released in 2022 to near-universal acclaim and huge box office returns, Barbarian demonstrated Cregger’s writing talent and technical capabilities behind the camera, showing the strange and creative paths his stories can take, as well as acting as a proof-of-concept that he was the right guy for the job on Resident Evil.

The film follows a woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) who goes to an AirBNB in the middle of the night to find a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) is already there. Unsure if she can trust him but lacking better options, she begrudgingly decides to stay the night. However, when she finds a secret door in the basement, she slowly discovers that there’s more going on beneath the surface (literally), and she might be in serious danger.

Zach Cregger Surprises Himself So He Can Surprise Audiences

Image via 20th Century Studios

We’ll avoid spoilers on the off-chance you haven’t seen the film, because a large part of the fun of seeing the movie for the first time is being surprised by the weird directions the story goes in, after the simple premise of the opening. Is the threat supernatural? A monster? A serial killer? The film keeps things initially grounded, with tension coming from the slow burn, but reaches a point after the discovery of the hidden door where things get abruptly bizarre. Similarly to Weapons, there are multiple times when the movie has something shocking happen and then quickly pulls back and shifts the perspective somewhere else, which keeps you guessing and helps dole out information in a refreshing way.

It’s that constant reset that became a trademark of Cregger’s writing process — the director deliberately avoided outlining while writing the screenplay, in order to keep the audience on their toes. It’s like the horror equivalent of the structure of a sketch from Whitest Kids U’Know (the funniest show that’ll ruin friendships or solidify them forever, depending on who you recommend it to). He explained to Creative Screenwriting, “As you know, the movie completely changes at the midpoint. That’s when I got bored of my own movie. I was like, if I see this coming, then the audience sees this coming, so I need something to happen here. That’s when I put that twist in there. It was difficult to tell if something supernatural was going on or not.”

Laying The Groundwork for ‘Resident Evil’

Despite its relatively low budget, Barbarian‘s atmosphere is effectively done (especially in the “below the house” segments), and is probably what got Cregger the job for Resident Evil. In fact, fans of the games noted the similarity, and even the great and powerful Jeremy Jahns said in the cold open in his review that Barbarian “might be the best Resident Evil movie we’ve ever gotten…kind of.” It’s claustrophobic, with great use of shadows and minimal light, and while everything in the house is lit very naturalistically with flowing camerawork, everything below has a frenetic energy to it that makes it feel like you’ve been dropped into a different movie. Cregger put it best while doing press for the movie: that when it came to rules for the tone, upstairs was David Fincher and downstairs was Sam Raimi.

Besides the creepy visuals and the overt threat of the thing that’s after Tess, the underlying horror is focused on the origin of the house and the disturbingly plausible things that were happening beneath it, without anyone knowing. This is how AJ (Justin Long) gets involved in the story; similarly to what Jordan Peele did with Get Out, it’s an interesting thematic layer that gives what’s already an entertaining horror movie more substance without feeling overbearing. After Barbarian, Cregger seemed to steer away from making social commentary one of his hallmarks, shy of the alcoholic parent subtext in Weapons, so it makes this more interesting as a one-and-done experiment. (That is, unless Resident Evil is secretly an allegory for the woeful state of the Transportation and Logistics Industry, but time will tell on that one.)

Barbarian is a movie made with the energy of a filmmaker who wants to make an impression and fill the running time with as much creativity as possible, even with a small budget. While the film’s tension and intrigue peaks with the reveal at the end of the first act, it’s still an incredibly entertaining and well-constructed film that doesn’t just rely on jumpscares or grotesque violence to make it memorable — though it does have a Psycho-esque moment early on and continues with the comedy/ horror tradition of doing terrible things to Justin Long’s eyes and/or face (he knows what he did). So, if you want to give Zach Cregger’s solo directorial debut outing another look before Resident Evil comes out next month, it’s currently streaming on HBO Max.

Release Date

September 9, 2022

Runtime

102 minutes