Barbarian ★★★
(MA) 103 minutes

The opening scenes of the horror thriller Barbarian are well stocked with alarms and alerts. The thunderstorm, the slum neighbourhood and the stranger occupying the rental house that Tess (Georgina Campbell) thought she had to herself are more than enough to give notice of the scares to come.

And if you’ve still failed to get the message, the film’s writer-director, Zach Cregger, has thrown in a clincher by choosing a score underpinned by a muffled chorus of orchestrated screams.

Georgina Campbell as Tess in Barbarian, which was made for $US4 million and has already notched up $US40 million in box-office figures worldwide.Credit:20th Century Studios

Contrary to expectations, Keith (Bill Skarsgard), the stranger, seems OK. He’s young, polite, not bad-looking and eager to help Tess deal with the mix-up. But is he too helpful? What if he’s drugged the wine that he’s poured for her? What if he’s planning to attack her after they have retired to their separate beds?

Cregger keeps these questions open for as long as he can. He says that he wrote the scene under the influence of The Gift of Fear, a non-fiction bestseller by a security consultant well versed in the devious tactics employed by sexual predators and by the time he’s finally resolved the situation, the pace has quickened, the plot has taken on a new twist and waves of nervous laughter are rippling through the cinema.

Like Fresh, Mimi Cave’s similarly gruesome horror movie hit of a few months ago, this one mixes satirical black humour with the viscerally grotesque, taking on an overtly feminist tilt with the introduction of the rental house’s landlord, AJ (Justin Long). He’s a cocky Hollywood actor facing a sexual harassment accusation and he plans to sell the house to help fund his legal defence but after finding Tessa and Keith’s luggage inside, he investigates further and his cockiness quickly dissolves into blind panic.

Bill (Bill Skarsgard) is earger to help Tess with her mix-up.Credit:20th Century Studios

Cregger, who graduated to feature films from sketch comedy, manages the script’s radical mood changes with a lot of skill. Amusement co-exists with dread, suspense and disgust with the egregious AJ providing some well-needed comic relief as his chauvinism is shown to go hand-in-hand with a broad streak of blatant cowardice. Campbell is his antithesis, anchoring the action with her resilience, although you do spend a lot of time silently screaming at her in the vain hope that she’s not going to make yet another potentially lethal move.

Cregger clearly regards the whole thing as a superior video game – except that he’s the one pushing all the buttons and our expectations are just part of the mechanism. In the end, the film’s feminist pretensions turn out to be highly suspect but that’s hardly a surprise. It’s not the kind of film you go to see because of its good intentions. But it is the kind of film that Hollywood loves. Made for $US4 million, it’s already notched up $US40 million in box-office figures worldwide. The fans are loving it, but I’m not sure that it’s going to win over any converts. It left me feeling more than a bit queasy.

Barbarian is in cinemas from October 20.

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