Murder Basement

Film: Barbarian
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

I need to tell you a story, and I promise it will be relevant to Barbarian. If you’ve seen this movie, you’ll know immediately when I tell you this is a story about what I affectionately called a murder basement. My older daughter moved to St. Louis during the pandemic for an opportunity with a dance company. My wife and I go down to St. Louis when she has shows. The first time we went down, we stayed at an Airbnb and it had a murder basement. I am not kidding.

Here’s specifically what I mean—there was a door in the house that was locked and barred from the inside of the house, and it led to a set of narrow stairs leading down. I certainly didn’t go down at night, but I did the next morning—and the stairs led to an open room that contained a trunk. I did not open the trunk. You couldn’t have paid me to open that trunk. I went back up the stairs and locked and barred the door again, that was my experience with the murder basement. If you’ve seen Barbarian, you know the connection I’m making.

Barbarian is a movie that consists of several parts. We open with Tess (Georgina Campbell) who is arriving at an Airbnb in Detroit. We’ll find out later that she is staying at literally the only house in the neighborhood that isn’t a burned-out wreck, but her immediate concern is that the house is already occupied by a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård). It seems that the booking company double-booked. Tess and Keith figure things out—he sleeps on the couch and she sleeps in a locked bedroom, but during the night she discovers the door unlocked.

The next day, on her own in the house, Tess discovers the basement, and foolishly (not unlike me, although in my defense both my wife and brother-in-law were upstairs waiting for me) heads down. She discovers a secret door, which leads to a hallway where she finds a small room with a disgusting mattress, a bucket, a video camera, and a bloody handprint. Worse, the door out of the basement closes and locks behind her, leaving her trapped inside until Keith gets back. Eventually, he returns, gets her out of the basement, but decides (again, foolishly) to check it out himself. Nothing good is going to happen at this point, but we’re also going to jump to the next part of the story.

In this part of the story, we learn that the house in question is owned by an actor named AJ. AJ needs to sell the house for funds because he has recently been accused of sexually assaulting his costar in a television pilot. AJ shows up at the house, sees that it’s being lived in, and discovers the basement on his own. AJ, though, doesn’t seem worried about what he finds in the basement. Instead, he’s excited that this might be additional square footage on the house. And he’s going to discover what’s in the basement, too, which at this point includes Tess, who has been down there for an unknown amount of time. It also includes a creature who seems desperate to make AJ and Tess into her children.

We’re also going to get a flashback to the past of the neighborhood where a man named Frank (Richard Brake) is the original owner of the house in question. It’s soon evident that Frank is the one who built the various basement rooms, which he uses to torture women; eventually we’re going to learn that Frank has been not just keeping women in the basement and forcing them to have children, but he’s been doing the same thing with the children.

Barbarian is not a pleasant movie, but it’s not supposed to be a pleasant movie. It’s a brutal one, and one that clearly wants to go not just for the shock, but for some gore in places. It really is all about giving the audience something they haven’t seen before. There are moments here that are shocking enough that the natural reaction is laughter because there isn’t really another way to handle it.

While this is a movie that can be taken at face value pretty easily, it’s also a movie that makes much more sense looked at as a metaphor for sexual assault. The creature in the basement is a result of such assaults, after all, and AJ himself is accused of sexual assault, something that puts him in an interesting position when confronting Frank and what Frank has done. This is especially highlighted when Tess tries to get the police to enter the house and is ignored as being homeless and probably on drugs rather than as someone who has been imprisoned against her will.

Barbarian isn’t the sort of movie that I think most people want to watch again right away. It’s surprisingly effective as a horror movie, though, and while there are a few moments of gratuitous gore, there’s enough story behind the horror trappings to keep it interesting.

But seriously, folks—don't go down in the murder basement, and if you do, don’t open things.

Why to watch Barbarian: It does not go anywhere that you expect.
Why not to watch: This is very clearly an allegory for sexual assault, so it’s potentially very triggering.