Movies

Reddit Picks a Flick With 93% Tomatometer as 2022’s Best Horror, And You Still Haven’t Seen It

Reddit Picks a Flick With 93% Tomatometer as 2022’s Best Horror, And You Still Haven’t Seen It
Image credit: 20th Century Studios

This horror movie is not what it seems at first glance.

In recent years, a new wave of horror has emerged – intelligent, artistic, non-standard films that stand in contrast to the horror films of the past. The Witch, The Lighthouse, Midsommar, Hereditary, The Babadook and their lesser-known counterparts formed a new movement in the genre called elevated horror and took it to a new level.

One of the main gems of this trend is the film by Zach Cregger, which was named the best horror of 2022 and received an impressive 93% for a project in this genre on Rotten Tomatoes – Barbarian.

What is Barbarian About?

Tess arrives at night in a dark suburb of Detroit to spend the night in a house she booked through Airbnb. And faces problems right away: the code does not match the lock of the cell with the key, the cell itself is empty, the house manager does not get in touch, but suddenly a man comes out of the door.

Reddit Picks a Flick With 93% Tomatometer as 2022’s Best Horror, And You Still Haven’t Seen It - image 1

He assures Tess that there was an overbooking and invites her to spend the night in the house, as it is late and there are no hotel rooms available. Suspense mounts, and a suspicious Tess at first refuses, but then it turns out that Tess is a researcher for an indie documentary, and the stranger is a potential main character of a future movie. Having calmed down, Tess goes to bed, but in the middle of the night the locked door to her room suddenly opens.

And that's all you need to know about this movie, because it's a cinematic experience in every sense of the word.

“I now recommend this movie to everybody, and will maybe say, “it’s a horror movie,” but nothing more. I tell them to Google nothing about it, and just go into it cold.” Reddit user CarneDelGato wrote.

Barbarian Is a Masterfully Crafted New Wave Horror

Barbarian looked like a boring, typical horror movie at the trailer stage, but everything we saw in the trailer was literally the first 20 minutes of the entire running time, after which the story unfolds from the most unexpected sides.

Reddit Picks a Flick With 93% Tomatometer as 2022’s Best Horror, And You Still Haven’t Seen It - image 2

Not only does Cregger build up suspense with great skill, making the viewer get nervous looking at such simple things as a cup of tea, but he also does incredible things with the dynamics of the plot. A chaotic set of details only begins to take shape in the middle of the action.

Many clues scattered throughout the movie seem completely meaningless at first, but when they come together into one big impressive picture, you will understand that you definitely started watching this movie for a reason.

Barbarian fits perfectly into the new wave of horror: like It Follows, Hereditary, Men and others, it uses fear to explore trauma and the darkest corners of the human mind.