Barbarian & Smile

Anyone who’s seen the trailer for Barbarian - the much buzzed-about new horror film from Zach Cregger - knows the basic setup. Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgard) discover they’ve been double-booked in the same Airbnb in a sketchy Detroit neighborhood and decide, with a certain level of trepidation (specifically on Tess’s part), to share the place for the night until the situation can be rectified… then things go off the rails. Discovering precisely *how* they go off the rails is, of course, where the pleasure lies in movies such as these.

Cregger, surprisingly, is better known as a comedian and sitcom star, but he shows a knack for this sort of material. The opening act, in which Tess and Keith slowly let their guard down and get to know one another, deftly balances on a knife’s edge between meet-cute charm and percolating apprehension. Skarsgard, a malleable actor who can shift between appealing and off-putting with relative ease, was a good choice for the role. But is the payoff worth it? Let’s just say Cregger does a good job zigging and zagging, throwing the viewer off-balance by repeatedly shifting perspectives and even time periods. One genuinely doesn’t know what to expect next - a rare feat that shouldn’t be taken for granted.​

Much of this is giddy fun in the moment… but Barbarian is also a rather fascinating litmus test for what exactly people want and expect from a horror movie. Because the film’s impact leans towards the ephemeral - invariably tethered to its own percussive bursts of shock value - there’s something slightly deflating about the immediate aftermath. It’s not a narrative that holds up to particular scrutiny, and the experience feels poised to degrade on repeat viewings. For many horror fans - those who covet, above all else, that particular endorphin rush unique to the genre - this will be a more than acceptable trade-off. For others, more invested in long-term legacy and the shelving worthiness of physical media, the shortcomings of the film's fleeting appeal will be felt far more acutely and unforgivably. 

In spite of its visually striking hook and rather ingenious marketing, Smile turns out to be a pretty basic curse thriller at heart, reminiscent of the likes of It Follows and Truth or Dare, and so steeped in the J-Horror tropes of The Ring and One Missed Call you almost can’t believe it isn’t a Japanese remake of some sort. In this case, the victims are systematically driven mad over the course of a week (sometimes less), then finally commit suicide in gruesome fashion while wearing a creepy rictus grin plastered across their faces - the curse then passes to whomever is unlucky enough to have witnessed the act.

The latest in the chain is Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a trauma psychiatrist who watches an ER patient gouge her own throat open - graphically. The main thing Parker Finn’s debut feature has going for it is an unrelenting, nihilistic nastiness - the sort not seen in a mainstream horror movie since perhaps Hereditary. Horror typically utilizes humor to release tension - to ease the audience’s collective pressure gauge - but Smile never loses its nerve, remaining wholly committed to its nightmarish downward spiral… an approach reflected in Bacon’s performance, which often feels less like acting and more like an endurance test. The script’s attempts to link the premise to larger themes of mental illness and generational trauma are superficial at best, but Bacon does an impressive job conveying the anguish of knowing that not only does her support system - her fiancé, her older sister, her co-workers, her therapist - not believe her, but they all think, deep down, she’s finally succumbing to the same demons that claimed her mother years ago, just as they always thought she would.​

The conflict in Japanese horror is almost invariably traced back to a vengeful spirit resulting from an unjust death, but Finn shows no real interest in exploring his curse’s origins or mythology. It’s simply the engine that drives this effective yet bruising picture. Eventually, a potential solution to Rose’s predicament emerges, but not surprisingly it’s a Faustian bargain. After all, the film may be called Smile, but it most definitely has not been built for happy endings.