Movies
‘Barbarians’ Review – A Slow Simmering Dinner Party Favors Satire Over Horror
Dinner parties always invite a recipe for disaster in horror. Or rather, dinner table etiquette tends to breed tension as social fears get exaggerated or exploited. Barbarians uses a cozy birthday dinner to mount social anxieties and pressures, but its slow simmer never quite reaches a boiling point thanks to a third act that pulls its punches.
A couple, Adam (Iwan Rheon) and Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno), wake up on Adam’s birthday feeling great about their idyllic life and the opportunity to finalize the purchase of their dream home. Property developer and influencer Lucas (Tom Cullen) arrives with actress girlfriend Chloe (Inès Spiridonov) to celebrate and close the deal. Their civilized gathering devolves, and chaos ensues. The more the beverages flow, the more secrets unravel and expose simmering resentment.
Writer/Director Charles Dorfman‘s feature debut sets up the setting and its central players with a methodical purpose. The heavy-handedly named Adam and Eva, who are trying to maintain their paradise, see Adam as the weaker of the pair. Adam passes by an injured fox on a morning run and can’t bring himself to help or hurt it, even when it mysteriously finds its way into his house. It’s up to Eva, the more assertive of the two, and local help to handle it. That dynamic gets underscored with the arrival of the alpha male-like Lucas. Influencer culture, masculinity, betrayals, and more get served throughout 24-hours, though it never pushes the envelope enough to earn its title.
Barbarians is a little too measured and restrained; betrayals among friends hit harder than the sharp detour into home invasion horror with a dabbling of folk horror. Dorfman adheres too closely to the imagery we’ve seen before, and the simplified story doesn’t contribute anything new to the conversation. It doesn’t help that Dorfman wants us to root against Adam and Lucas, especially Lucas. Both are two halves of the same coin, selfish beings beneath charismatic facades. Rheon ensures the lines of morality are blurred and harder to detect in Adam.
Dorfman’s slow-burn offers scenic set pieces and fascinating character work, focusing more on subtle satire than horror. It results in a third act that isn’t intense enough to satisfy. Part of that feels intentional; what transpires feels apropos of the theme and its characters. The dynamics and conflict-heavy relationships between the core four take up so much precedence; the way their mere presence has ruffled the locals’ feathers falls to the background, underscoring the finale’s failure to fully register as it should.
Playing the horror too safe after a lengthy, plodding act two gets further diminished by cat and mouse sequences obscured by darkness and frenzied camera work. Built-up tension dissipates when it’s difficult to see the long-awaited explosion of violence. Adam, Eva, Lucas, and Chloe may fascinate in their choices, but finding rooting interest among them can be tricky.
The latest dinner party from hell scenario lobs scathing critiques at various subjects, from influencer culture to privilege to displacement and beyond. Framing it almost entirely through its flawed and oft frustrating characters means some of those critiques get undeveloped and renders the horror as impotent as one of its leads.
Barbarians releases in theaters and on VOD on April 1, 2022.
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
You must be logged in to post a comment.