‘Barbarians’ Review
Stars: Iwan Rheon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Tom Cullen, Ines Spiridonov, Will Kemp, Connor Swindells, Steve Saunders, Tommy McDonnell | Written by Charles Dorfman, Statten Roeg | Directed by Charles Dorfman
Set over the course of twenty-four hours, Barbarians sees couple Adam (Iwan Rheon) and Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) wake up in their supposed dream house on Adam’s birthday. Lucas (Tom Cullen), property developer and friend of the couple, arrives for dinner with his actress girlfriend Chloe (Ines Spiridonov), to celebrate Adam’s birthday and the couple’s buying of the house. But secrets unravel over dinner, and when the doorbell rings the evening takes a nightmarish turn. As manners give way to madness, an ‘idyllic’ evening of celebration descends into a dark night of terror; and the group’s civilized dinner party turns out to be anything but.
There’s been somewhat of a focus recently on uncomfortable dinner parties in horror, whether they’re the main focus of a film or part of a bigger story. From The Invitation and You’re Next to the literally named The Dinner Party and the festival favourite The Free Fall, which uses a dinner party to brilliantly unveil the film’s true horror, dinner partiers are making something of a renaissance. I say renaissance as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise used to use the trope superbly to terrorise its films protagonists… and April Fool’s Day magnificently parodied the cliche waaaay back in 1986.
But Barbarians is not just about a dinner party. Oh no. This is also a home invasion thriller, with an already tense situation – macho posturing on a part of Adam and Lucas and a possible affair making this dinner party explode into violence – into something much worse. And when I say worse, I don’t mean just for the group of partiers, I mean for everyone. The entire thing breaks down, very much in a “violence begets violence” manner, as the two couples turn the tables on the attackers. It’s all very much reminiscent of Straw Dogs but filtered through a more modern lens.
The cast are all uniformly excellent, with Iwan Rheon delivering another solid performance, as he has done with the majority of the films he’s made post-Game of Thrones (so why is he not a bigger star?); whilst Catalina Sandino Moreno plays her role with subtly and nuance. As for Tom Cullen, as the social media star come entrepreneur, he plays the fame-hungry, fortune-seeking, stereotype to perfection – managing to do a great job of being the kind of two-faced character you suspect most of these friendly social media stars to be; hiding a truly mean, bordering on evil streak, underneath the smiles and platitudes of his online persona. Unfortunately, not much time is spent with the home invaders, besides letting the audience know their motivations, and so they feel very much like cliches – in fact, their entire motivation is a well-worn revenge trope!
However beyond that, Barbarians has interesting things to say about social media, selfish nature of fame/fortune and toxic masculinity, and as such is a great new take on a familiar story; and that title is very apt too.
Barbarians is out now in US cinemas and on VOD from IFC Midnight.
