9: Barbarian (2022)
Trailer which reveals one twist but not the biggest
Title possibly chosen as it contains the same letters as Airbnb. (With AAR left over, for After Action Report?)
Content warning for briefly heard but not shown sexual violence
The solo directorial debut from comedian Zach Cregger who has since made Weapons, I went into it knowing it’s partially comedy and has a couple of wild twists and an unlikeable protagonist. I didn’t know that one of the twists is...
That unlikeable protagonist doesn’t actually show up at all until 45 minutes in. He then speedruns through the reveal of the creepy things in the Airbnb that the likeable protagonists of the first half already discovered, after a red herring affected by some casting and open discussion of gendered power imbalances in what could otherwise be a romcom meet-cute - there’s a 2022 romcom called About Fate that runs with a similar start point. It’s a tonal shift like Evil Dead to Evil Dead II happening halfway through the same movie.
And then we jump to follow someone else, in a flashback giving the origin, which is where the content warning comes in. Apart from that it’s fun, but that’s a pretty big “apart from that”.
Also wish those cops had gotten killed.
The medium: Netflix
Gameability: Secret passages and monsters of a sort.
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