This past Monday, my friends and I walked into the movie theater to see zero people. We walked to our seats and ordered popcorn to prepare for the movie. I had been wanting to watch “Barbarian” for a while and I was excited to watch my first horror movie of October. 

Earlier, when I was watching the trailer, I felt very confused. During the first half, happy music was playing in the background and I immediately became curious about the movie. The mood of the trailer completely changed after the happy music stopped playing and shifted to an eerier tone. After watching the trailer, I was really interested in watching “Barbarian” and asked my friends if they wanted to watch it with me. 

As we watched the commercials, I sat in anticipation and was eager to watch the movie. Ever since I was younger, I have always loved watching scary movies because I loved jump scares and the feeling of adrenaline that accompanied scary movies.. 

The movie started with a woman named Jess, who is trying to get into an Airbnb to escape the pouring rain. She rings the doorbell and unexpectedly a man, Keith, opens the door and claims the house she ordered is also the Airbnb that he purchased. She ends up staying at the Airbnb, with Keith only expecting to stay there for the night. At this point of the movie, I just knew things in the movie were about to go badly. 

The next day, she returns to the Airbnb from an interview and ventures into the basement of the house. As Jess explores the basement, she finds a secret door that leads to more creepy and unexpected rooms. Jess decides to leave the basement, but finds herself locked in. At this point in the I thought that something really big was going to happen in the movie.

Keith then arrives at the Airbnb and helps her get out of the basement. Jess then tells him everything she saw and Keith decides to go check out the basement. Jess waits nervously and becomes worried, as she has not heard anything from Keith. She finally decides to reenter the basement and discovers “barbarians” that were living underneath the house this whole time. I was kind of disappointed when the barbarian was revealed because I thought that it would make the movie a lot scarier, but I still wasn’t scared at all. 

There were definitely many plot twists in which the plot shifted from talking about one subject to a complete opposite subject. This movie left me with a lot of questions that I don’t think were answered. I liked the plot but I still think more could have been added to the movie to make the storyline make more sense. The movie added background stories to the plot but never finished the background story. 

I thought the actors did very well in the movie, although I didn’t recognize anyone other than Bill Skarsgård, who plays Pennywise in the popular movie “It.” They portrayed their characters very well, and I was definitely invested in their story.

I also didn’t think the movie was that scary, and I was disappointed because I love really scary movies. My friends thought it was scary, but I, on the other hand, feel the movie was more of a creepy thriller, and would not categorize it as horror because I honestly didn’t get scared at all. 

Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good. The storyline was really interesting, but the only thing that was lacking was the horror aspect. Although I still thought it was a good movie, it seemed like the movie wasn’t finished. I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys creepy movies and anyone who is in high school or above.