The Most Disgusting Horror Movie of 2022 is Finally Streaming Online
One of the most shocking and distressing horror thrillers ever, Barbarian by Zach Cregger is now available to stream on HBO Max, so if you somehow missed it in theatres it is high time you watched it with a subscription as this Halloween season draws an end.
The movie premiered at San Diego Comic-Con on in July, and was theatrically released in the United States by 20th Century Studios in early September. Barbarian has quickly become the talk of the town and the army of horror fans propelled it to the top of the horror movie charts.
The film stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgard and Justin Long. Written and directed by Zach Cregger (primarily known as a part of the absurdist comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U' Know) and Arnon Milchan, Barbarian follows Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) who books an Airbnb home in Detroit where she comes for an important job interview on a rainy night. Upon her arrival she discovers that it has already been double booked by a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgad).
Tension starts to rise as Tess is forced to spend a night in a house with a man she knows nothing about and who she sees for the first time in her life. Next day she also discovers a labyrinth in the basement of the house and this is when the hell breaks loose. The basement is home to a repulsive creature called The Mother, a hairy deformed naked woman who wants to take Tess and another person AJ (Justin Long) prisoner.
According to Paul Tassi, Forbes senior contributor, "Barbarian sets up its twists and turns in ways you will never see coming, and by the end, you'll realize you have watched an entirely different movie than the one you thought you were going to."
In a five-star review on Digital Spy, the film is also described as the one that "constantly wrongfoots the audience, delivering audacious swing after swing". The review suggests that by the year's end the movie will be "all you can talk about as it's the best horror movie of the year." Den of the Geek also praised Barbarian for "striking a campy horror tone that's both refreshingly irreverent and also cinematically satisfying."
Apart from unconventional twists and turns the movie has a lot of disturbing scenes, which will surely make even a trained horror fan want to puke – but no spoilers here!
Speaking about his film with Vulture, Cregger said that he literally sent Barbarian to every production company that made a horror film in the last 15 years. And all of them said no.
"They didn't like that the movie resets on page 50. They didn't like that there's a character who's part of Hollywood. And they said nobody wants to follow a rapist for 30 pages," Cregger said. It was BoulderLight's team that fully shared his vision and who were on the same page with Cregger.
"It's a weird movie on paper, but it's never not funny, scary, thrilling, entertaining," BoulderLight co-founder Raphael Margules told Vultures, "the very reasons people passed on it is why we wanted to do it."
Surprisingly (or not) Barbarian grossed more than $42 million dollars at the global box office, which is almost ten times more than its reported budget of $4.5 million.