Welcome to Critical Movie Analysis! This is a blog where I analyze and provide a political, economic, and social reading on movies. I will analyze both new and old movies pertaining to the horror, sci-fi, drama and other genres. Foregoing a traditional approach of synopsizing the movie — offering a general timeline of events — I jump into the movie assuming that, you, the dear reader, has already watched the specific movie. These readings are, unfortunately, not devoid of spoilers. Watch the movie to gain a richer understanding of the movie and my analysis! Spoiler alerts will always be provided. In fact, there is no higher crime than that of deliberately (or accidentally) spoiling a movie. Jokes aside, I have been wanting to do something like this for over a decade and have finally found the motivation (and time) to do so. Each entry in Critical Movie Analysis will begin by offering a brief overview and introduction of the movie and will quickly transition to my reading of the film. My reading of the film is, admittedly, not intended to be the definitive, absolute reading of the film. The intentions, background, and politics of the director, writer, etc. will not be entirely dismissed. In this case, Roland Barthes' death of the "author" is substituted with the death of the "film's crew." The point is, then, to provide my own reading infused with my own politics, values, and standpoint. In short, I don't entirely care what the movie intended to do but will focus on what I saw. In some cases, I will analyze movies that, at face value, are devoid of significant meaning or have a questionable political inclination and in turn I will provide a "revisionist" interpretation telling the dear reader what meaning I am able to map onto the movie. Sometimes I will deal with the meaning of the film or the themes it deals with that are explicit or implicit. Other times I will catapult an alien interpretation onto it. If this sort of paranoid interrogation where things are deeper than they seem interests you, you're at the right place. Buckle in.
An Analysis of Barbarian
Disclaimer: The themes of Barbarian and this analysis deal with themes of sexual violence.
*Spoiler Alert*
My inaugural Critical Movie Analysis begins with 2022's Barbarian directed by Zach Cregger. A psychological, thrilling horror movie about an Airbnb stay going horrifically wrong, Barbarian is an intensely impacting modern tale of abduction and survival. I had to wait an hour (and consume a beer) to allow the adrenaline to leave my body after finishing it. The protagonist Tess, played by Georgina Campbell, is double booked in an Airbnb with a suspicious man named Keith played by Bill Skarsgård in a sketchy, abandoned neighborhood of Detroit. The movie quickly develops beyond our obvious expectation of our protagonist being terrorized by Keith (Skarsgård's phenomenal performance as "Pennywise" in the modern It movies sets the tone for his supposed role as the antagonist), to a more thematically disturbing movie. It is these themes that are infused with profound political economic, social, gendered and generational under and overtones which I explore in this essay.
The Political Economy of Abandonment
The abandoned neighborhood of Brightmoor in Detroit, Michigan sets the stage for the unfolding of Barbarian's plot. The setting of this decrepit and rundown neighborhood in Detroit is, I maintain, no mere accident; a political economic viewing illuminates a deeper understanding of the film. Detroit, nicknamed motor city, is famous for once being the bastion of automotive production in the U.S, the automobile capital of the world, with the "Big Three" car companies Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles hailing from Detroit. Until the car manufacturing industry fled organized labor in search of cheaper wages as well as deregulated labor and environmental protections in the Third World and right to work states in the U.S. now, Detroit is infamous for having been abandoned and left to rot by both capital and the state. Back to Barbarian when Tess is trying to access the lockbox and key to gain entrance to the Airbnb in the dead of night, the camera cuts from the lit porch to a cut away shot behind her unveiling a thick, eerie blanket of complete and utter darkness. The next sunny day our protagonist steps out of her modern, chic short-term rental to the entire bloc of homes completely worn down and abandoned: boards on windows, erratic graffiti, massive holes puncturing walls and caving ceilings in. It is clear this short-term rental is the only lived in home on the entire block. These motifs of abandonment, disrepair, and blight continue with us and extend to other concepts throughout the movie.
Later in the movie there is a flashback scene to the previous owner of the house in the 1980s exiting his house and entering a flourishing suburb with brightly colored homes and cars, kids playing, and the neighbors watering the lush lawns. The news anchor on the car radio announces that the year is 1981 and that Reagan has inherited the worst economic situation in 50 years. A neighbor says that he is selling his house to cut his losses before the looming economic crisis. The previous owner responds that he will never sell and will never leave, which is tied to the next section's theme of generations of sexual violence. Brightmoor itself was a planned community to cheaply house workers to feed the automobile manufacturing plants in Detroit. Much happens in this flashback scene that pertains to the following section on Generational Patriarchy & Sexual Violence that will be explored then. The point here is to form a stark contrast with contemporary abandoned Detroit and highlight the film's political economic inclination with capital about to make an organized retreat to the vestiges of the Third World.
Fast forwarding to Barbarian's current timeline, Jake Long's character AJ is both an actor who has just been "cancelled" for committing sexual violence against a woman and the owner of the same short-term rental who's gone back to Detroit to liquidate his investments to pay for an expensive lawyer. AJ discovers the basement (in which Tess is trapped) with a sketchy room with blood stains on the wall with a bucket and camera pointed at the bed as well as a lower hallway leading to a completely dark room with old empty cages. When Tess discovered the basement, she — like us, the audience — was petrified. However, when AJ comes across it, his response is one of seizing the opportunity as he looks to see if the extra floor space will increase the value of his investment and immediately begins to measure it. This portrayal of, on one hand, violence, terror, and suffering with a potential profit on the other is important to keep in mind.
The juxtaposition of two radically different Detroits based on their political economy tells us many things. For one, the theme of abandonment speaks to a population that is only useful insofar as they are able to produce a profit for the powers that be. Once surplus value can no longer be extracted as efficiently, entire communities are left behind to rot into decrepit shadows of their former selves. The community has long been abandoned and the only reason there's an Airbnb — the only reason our protagonists find themselves in a horrific situation in the first place — is to exploit cheap property values to turn a profit. The imagery of abandonment serves a political economic inclination, yes, and it also signals towards Barbarian's social commentary on sexual violence and patriarchy across generations. Women who are victims and/or survivors of sexual violence are abandoned as a community similarly to how physical communities are abandoned wholesale while the men who commit sexual violence against women sink into obscurity and are not held responsible.
Generational Patriarchy & Sexual Violence
Sexual violence is Barbarian's more explicit provocation. The film's real horror is not the strange looming Keith who Tess has to share the night with. Its apparent horror comes from within the home. It is the abominable Mother played by Matthew Patrick Davis (which in actuality is not the true horror, something I will expand on later) who traps Tess and later AJ, who we come to horrifyingly find out is the product of four decades worth of abduction and rape. Barbarian engages with sexual violence by contrasting how it was dealt with in previous generations and provides a remedy through its reckoning of sexual violence that manifests a materialized representation of what a lack of reckoning will lead to.
When we are introduced to AJ with a discombobulating abrupt cut from Keith's murder, the song Riki Tiki Tavi by Donovan is playing in his convertible as he is about to hear the news of his credible accusation of rape. It is a catchy upbeat song, yes, (take a listen here), but the lyrics also reveal a mirroring of the movie:
Everybody who read the Jungle Book Will know that Riki Tiki Tavi's a mongoose who kills snakes When I was a young man I was led to believe there were organisations To kill my snakes for me I.E. the church, I.E. the government, I.E. school But when I got a little older I learned I had to kill them myself
These lyrics can be applied to how sexual violence was treated in the 20th century. The snakes in this case are not predators or abusers but are actually the women survivors and victims who attempted to get any form of justice. Before the response to sexual abuse and violence in the #MeToo reckoning, apparatuses including the church, government, and school functioned to sweep said sexual violence under the rug acting as mongooses to kill the women "snakes." This is not to say that apparatuses of power currently deal with sexual violence in meaningful or complete ways. We all know this is anything but the case. Instead, perpetrators and rapists have to deal with them in terms of denying, silencing, and smearing. Generationally, however, things have improved. And Barbarian tackles those questions with a new approach.
Abandonment comes back into play because the women victims and survivors of sexual violence have historically been abandoned by society. However, society has had a reckoning with sexual violence since the #MeToo era which the film explicitly engages with. AJ's introduction into the film, as stated earlier, comes as he is being accused (and admits himself) that he raped a woman on set. AJ and what happens to his character signal a shift between how sexual violence has been dealt with over the generations. The old man, "Frank" played by Richard Brake, who we met in the flashback scene, we come to find out has lived inside the very same short-term rental for over 40 years and abducted, tortured, and raped countless women. The Mother who appears to be the barbarian herself is his own daughter. The abandonment of Detroit is conjoined with the abandonment of women victims and survivors of sexual violence. This old rapist has escaped any semblance of accountability and justice for decades. In 2022, AJ is facing accountability and even justice unlike how it has not been properly dealt with previously.
I am arguing that the Mother holding Tess hostage (whose only motivation is to really become a mother and "raise" Tess and AJ as her own) is a physical manifestation of the specter of reckoning with sexual violence coming back to haunt and terrorize those who commit sexual violence. The climax of Barbarian is Tess killing the Mother even after she endangered her own life to save Tess. This coupled with the father escaping reckoning by killing himself once AJ tells him the cops will come to save both of them, this is where the generational juncture of refusing reckoning or justice to sexual violence ends: not retreating to a time where sexual violence was ignored and hid in plain sight. The thesis of my analysis is Barbarian's provocative social commentary on sexual violence and its consequences changing through the generations and the refusal of perpetrator accountability.
To Conclude: Who is the Barbarian?
A question I repeatedly asked myself throughout this rollercoaster of a movie was just who is the barbarian in Barbarian? At first glance the barbarian could not be anyone other than the Mother. The same Mother whose ghastly countenance and grotesque acts of kidnapping and murder fills us with repulsion. The Mother is obviously the barbarian as she becomes the horror of the movie, wreaking havoc and killing Keith and kidnaping Tess and AJ. But, what if she is positioned not as the barbarian but as a victim/survivor herself? Here I am agitating that the Mother is not the barbarian and that the rapist kidnapper Frank and AJ are actually the barbarians incarnate.
Historically the term barbarian was used pejoratively by the Greeks and then Romans and Chinese to refer to those who fell outside of their accepted norms and culture. Barbarian has since come to mean someone who is either uncivilized or cruel and brutal. In the context of this film, barbarian is emblematic of severe brutality and cruelty. It is difficult to stomach putting into words the unspeakable and subhuman horrors Frank is responsible for. It becomes more clear that this is the true horror of the film. It is not a supernatural entity or something bombastic that is emblematic of Hollywood slasher films. The horror is, as I have shown thus far, something very real that plagues our society: those who perpetrate sexual violence and society's response.
Frank during the past forty decades kidnapped unsuspecting women, held them hostage in the basement of his home (the same basement Tess and Keith uncover the Mother), and raped them and the children they were forced to bear. The homeless man living in the same neighborhood who saves Tess at one-point states that there is something worse in the house than the Mother. Up until this point we as the audience are left wondering if there is another monstrosity in the basement that we will meet, which we never do. The thing that is worse is the bedridden Frank — who even the Mother is afraid of entering his room. Frank due to his perpetrating the cycles of sexual violence literally and metaphorically produces the Mother and the terror she unleashes. The patriarch Frank and not the Mother is the barbarian as his violent uncivilized actions directly and indirectly produces more and more violence and trauma. On the other hand, AJ can be interpreted as also being a barbarian in that his sexual violence has taken on a modern form. No meaning yes, not accepting responsibility, attempting to persuade his victim into dropping her lawsuit, and literally sacrificing others for his own gain are all tactics AJ uses as a response to his accusations. In the scene when Tess and AJ have escaped their trap and are wandering the basement, AJ holding the gun (taken from Frank) shoots in the dark at the first sound he hears, hitting Tess. Whether accidental or not, the imagery of him without hesitation shooting Tess, a survivor, is quite on the nose. AJ has fallen out of civilization's acceptable norms and has thus transformed the meaning of barbarian into something more modern. The main difference between the two barbarians is that AJ actually has to deal with the consequences of committing sexual violence.
In the final scene, we as the audience are provoked into sympathizing with the Mother — the same mother who has hunted and haunted our protagonists — as not only her humanity is revealed as she sacrificed herself to save Tess but also as a victim/survivor of sexual violence herself. Cooing to Tess, caressing Tess after surviving AJ kicking her off a water tower to save himself, the Mother shows that she is not the barbarian but, after everything that's transpired, is a feeling and caring human being and a product of her environment. Able to be cut the tension with a fine knife, the audience holds on with strain as we wonder what Tess will do. That tension we have held throughout the film, one of first ghastly horror and then retribution, is severed as Tess shoots the crying, grieving Mother. We feel for the mother's humanity because, after all, she only wanted to be what she was forced to be (and deprived of being): a loving, embracing mother. This signals that the Mother is indeed not the barbarian but is so much more: she becomes the sacrificial lamb. When Tess is forced to make the decision to spare or kill the Mother, taking the latter decision symbolizes severing ties with how sexual violence has been dealt with for previous generations and transforming atonement into something completely new. The Mother is sacrificed for the greater good, and she is sacrificed to come to grips with our current generation's attitudes and processes of contending with sexual violence. This is a refusal to return to how sexual violence was dealt with before and to offer a clean slate of reckoning with sexual violence. In the climax AJ is swiftly killed by the Mother gesturing a conclusion and reprisal — or, a form of justice, depending on how you look at it — towards his own sexual violence and wanton selfishness. All of Barbarian's themes coalesce into this climax offering up a conclusion or, at least, a decision — debatable to be satisfactory or agreeable — of how society must now respond to abandonment and sexual violence or face the consequences.