What “Barbarian” gets right about terrifying moms and twisted love

If you’re seeking a fun film to watch with mom this Mother’s Day, I would not suggest “Barbarian.” (Unless you and your mom are both big fans of horror movies where people have their heads split open by the sheer force of an unholy beast, in which case, start popping the popcorn.) But, then again, if you’re looking for a fun film to watch with your mom on Mother’s Day, you may not be the target audience for the loathsome, delightful metaphor for motherhood that writer-director Zach Cregger keenly wove into his 2022 horror film. 

Cregger’s take on complicated parent-child dynamics has no trouble standing out in a movie so stuffed to the gills with heavy-handed, thinly executed social analogies. It’s one of the few elements of the film I had any lingering affection for after seeing it in a packed screening in the fall of 2022. Audiences hooted and hollered, gasped and guffawed. But through the whole movie, I was left unmoved. Call me crazy, but I don’t think being formally averse to good pacing is a bold directorial vision. Nonetheless, people’s affection for “Barbarian” is intriguing, especially because so many people I know recognize that it’s not a very good movie by most standards, but they love it anyway. A strangely forgivable layer of charm can exist in even the most fraught relationships. 

With Cregger’s follow-up, “Weapons,” due out in August, now seemed like as good a time as any to give “Barbarian” another try to see what merits I might have missed the first time around. As it turns out, I enjoyed the film even less on a second watch, but was all the more fascinated by its third act: a slapdash hodgepodge of tonal shifts and wacky reveals that both hinder the movie and give it its staying power. A bit of unforgettable gross-out horror between a “Mother” and her “child” strikes at cheap laughs, yet culls a deeply sad undertone that makes “Barbarian” impossible to ignore completely.

Strangely, that makes the film the perfect Mother’s Day watch. “Barbarian” is hilarious and engaging for some. For others, it’s uncomfortable and exhausting. By provoking those symbiotic reactions, Cregger’s twisted tale of motherhood becomes a realistic picture of the tenuous yet loving relationships many people have with their mothers. 

If you’ve never seen “Barbarian” or only seen a trailer, that might make absolutely no sense to you. To Cregger’s credit, his film (and its marketing team) do a great job of burying the lede. Perhaps too great, considering that the film’s three-act structure is so clunkily chopped up that its narrative pivots might as well come with brief intermissions to use the bathroom. But before the movie double-foots the gas and the brake, it starts exceptionally strong. A young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives in a run-down Detroit neighborhood in the middle of the night, ready to check into her Airbnb before a big job interview. But Tess is surprised that her accommodations are already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgård), who booked the house on a different app. Keith invites Tess inside and out of the pouring rain so they can figure it out together, and after a healthy amount of speculation, she reluctantly accepts his offer. Tess’ initial uncertainty would indicate that she’s the thinking person’s horror protagonist, until Cregger puts her into a situation where rationality is null and void. 

Georgina Campbell as Tess in “Barbarian” (Courtesy of 20th Century Studios). Cregger knows the audience will undoubtedly suspect Keith is up to something, especially since Skarsgård has such a penchant for villain roles. But here, he’s one of the few good guys, caught up in dire circumstances when he and Tess discover a hidden doorway in the basement. Inside is a long passageway leading to a derelict room with a dirty mattress and a camera — not exactly a featured photo on the Airbnb listing. Against their better judgment, the two explore further and discover a system of tunnels beneath the house, where a giant, hostile beast awaits them, ready to smash Keith to bits. Just when things get going, Cregger flips the script and transitions to a seemingly entirely different plotline happening across the country, where an up-and-coming Hollywood tycoon, AJ (Justin Long), receives a call from his agent telling him his career is about to end.

For expediency’s sake, I’ll make this painfully long story short. AJ owns the Detroit house and uses it as a side hustle, but does not know about the labyrinth below its foundation. When he returns after a swift cancellation, he discovers the same ramshackle room and tunnels, only to be chased down by the same creature and locked in a pit alongside Tess. What’s really going on soon becomes clear when the monster lowers a baby bottle into the pit, asking them both to suckle from its rubber teat. When AJ refuses, the creature snatches him out of his enclosure and brings him to a makeshift nursing room, where she makes him drink from her breast while an instructional lactation video plays on a television nearby.

Upon first watch, I didn’t find this nearly as knee-slappingly funny as the throngs of people in the theater yukking it up around me. Cregger’s taste for shock schlock is far too force-fed for my taste — pun 100% intended. But knowing where the film would go during my rewatch, this scene conjured more anger than annoyance. In the context of the story, this gross-out bit becomes truly sad, and that’s something an audience watching the film for the first time likely won’t be able to connect with. What should elicit the movie’s strongest emotional reaction is played more for laughs and gasps. But in an ideal world, this sequence could be so disturbing that it commands viewers to watch a second time, or show the film to a friend. Knowing what’s coming, it’s easier to watch “Barbarian” with an open mind rather than through clamped-shut eyes.

A third and final narrative shift comes in the third act when we discover that this maze beneath the house was constructed by Frank (Richard Brake), a madman who kidnapped and raped women and forced them to carry their children to term, only to do the same thing with those children. It’s truly sickening to think about, which is why Cregger’s refusal to get into the grotesquerie of it all is grating. If you’re going to go there, go there; really explore the evil men do. 

Though he pulls that punch way back, Cregger does manage a heartbreaking story about motherhood. The beast toying with Tess and AJ is a severely inbred monstrosity, a “copy of a copy of a copy.” (That could be the film’s thesis statement, being lifted from other, better horror movies. Okay, I’ll shut up!) She was raised in captivity and knows nothing other than cruelty, mixing with the innocence of her innate maternal instinct like black dye. She’s a being who never asked for her fate, and her forced life leaves her violent with resentment. She’s a bad mother, but loves her “children” dearly. As Gillian Flynn so brilliantly wrote in “Sharp Objects”: A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

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When Cregger tries his hand at expanding a commentary on cycles of abuse, “Barbarian” stumbles again. This is, unfortunately, not the venue for such a nuance. But it’s interesting how, watching this film a second time, I found myself wanting him to maintain focus on this Mother figure. In media depictions of cruel yet well-meaning mothers, it can be hard to empathize with the monsters who look like us. The familiarity of their distinctly human faces stings too much — a recognizable reminder that children deserve unconditional love, and that far too many grow up without it, resulting in a tenuous relationship with their parents in the years that follow. But funnily enough, the blunt writing and hideous face of this cruel parent make sympathizing with a monstrous mother far simpler than a depiction that may be more complex. In his clumsy writing, Cregger pulls out one shining gem. 

In the chaos that follows, Tess develops real sympathy for this creature, the same one that held her captive and tried to kill her, proof that you can be a survivor of your progenitor’s twisted form of love and still turn out to be a good person. When Tess looks at the Mother with understanding and compassion, her assailant’s temper eases. All the Mother wants is to be a good parent, free from the dark life she was forced into. Tess recognizes her pain, and the recognition releases the Mother from suffering. In their mutual honesty, there is forgiveness, resilience and healing — at least for a moment. Like all complicated mother-child relationships, things are never quite so simple, as much as both parties might like them to be. And though I dislike almost every last thing about “Barbarian,” Cregger’s skillful ability to make a dynamic that’s so complicated into something so easily identifiable and empathetic will never be one of them.