Written And Directed by Charles Dorfman
Adam (to Eva): "It's just you and me against the world and if anyone gets in our way, I'll just shoot them to death."
Went for a British horror flick last night out of boredom. I might not have picked the greatest offering in this one but at least it was one that didn't outstay it's welcome.
Throw in two couples - Adam (Iwan Rheon)/Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and Lucas (Tom Cullen)/Chloe (Inès Spiridonov) and you've got an awkward get together for the birthday of Adam in a countryside house in the middle of nowhere.
Within minutes of this movie, there's a barely concealed mutual loathing between Adam and Lucas that they poorly try to disguise through laddish banter. Lucas's the face of a company named Gateway and Adam's the leaseholder of it. Oh and the property in question is near a sacred site to druids.
As the birthday hinjinks go about, there's tension between both couples, the reveal of a pregnancy and an affair but to get back to the horror side of things, how about some intruders? Well, the birthday party did need to be livened up.
Wearing some animal masks, our intruders - Dan (Connor Swindells), Neil (Tommy McDonnell) and John (Will Kemp) terrorise both couples, including trying to make Lucas film a confession over a past slight. Anyways, things get rather bloody and there's losses on both sides.
In fact the way the movie was panning out, it did look like both couples were going to die. One of them did survive and it's the one that was the more sympathetic of the two. It did give the movie a bit of a happy ending.
- The intruders wore bird masks and had very little dialogue. They were the sons of Alan Wakes, who was Lucas's former business partner.
- Lucas had given Adam an unspecified drug as a birthday present. Adam used it to get back at Lucas during the celebrations itself.
- While Neopaganism did factor into the movie, I'm surprised they didn't lean in harder with it.
- Chronology: Present day in the English countryside.
Barbarians in some ways was a nice exploration of two couples who might be friends but also didn't like each other a great deal. The first half is fairly mundane and it's up to the second half for things to get remotely interesting.
Rating: 5 out of 10
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