Zach Cregger pushes boundaries of horror cinema with Barbarian
By Guillermo Azábal
Los Angeles, USA, Sep 7 (EFE).- American director Zach Cregger makes his debut in horror films with Barbarian, a movie characterized by spine-chilling scenes, humor and social criticism that pushes the boundaries of the genre.
The movie tells the story of a young woman named Tess, played by British actress Georgina Campbell, who travels to Detroit for a job interview and ends up trapped in an eerie secret passageway in the basement of the house she has rented.
“I just didn’t know myself as I was writing it, so I am writing the story and I didn’t know the ending, I didn’t know what was going to happen from page to page so I knew that if I didn’t know then the audience couldn’t know,” Cregger told Efe in an interview.
The plot begins with Tess arriving at the house she has rented to find a man has already taken her spot. Keith, played by Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård, engages with Tess in a sinister, flirtatious manner that creates uncertainty around the man’s intentions.
“I think the way that Zach went about the script, especially in the opening sequence when she first meets Keith, (…) it’s an idea of showing you lots of horror tropes of things that audience members can immediately go, ‘that is not a good idea’, even something as inconsequential as him making her a cup of tea feels very menacing,” Campbell told Efe.
The plot explodes in the second half of the movie with the arrival of AJ Gilbride, acted by American Justin Long, who plays a man accused of sexual harrasment.
With the development of the plot, Barbarian criticizes macho behavior and stereotypes that are normalized in today’s society.
“It challenges all of your expectations, (…) it’s just a great, unique, imaginative horror movie, I have never seen anything like it before,” Long told Efe.
Barbarian, which will be released in United States cinemas Friday, will measure its success at the US box office against the drama True Things, its main competition this weekend, starring Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke. EFE
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