One Of The Scariest Scenes In Barbarian Drags You Into The Dark

(Welcome to Scariest Scene Ever, a column dedicated to the most pulse-pounding moments in horror with your tour guides, horror experts Chris Evangelista and Matt Donato. In this edition, Chris goes into the basement with "Barbarian.")

Spoilers follow.

"Barbarian" is one of the best horror movies of 2022, and part of the fun is how the film plays with our expectations. Writer-director Zach Cregger is constantly pulling the rug out from under us, setting something up only to knock it down. And one of the scariest scenes in the film comes early on when we finally get a hint as to what's going on here. But it's just a taste of the madness and horror to come. Best of all, it's a lot of fun to watch (albeit in a scary, edge-of-your-seat sort of way). 

Tess (Georgina Campbell) is in Detroit for a job interview. She's booked an Airbnb-type location for her stay, but when she arrives at the house during a bad rainstorm she discovers someone is already there. Keith (Bill Skarsgård) claims he rented the house, too — and he has proof. Tess can either try to find a motel or crash at the place for the night, but she's understandably wary. After all, Keith is a stranger. Can she trust him? Is she really willing to spend the night in a house with some random guy who may or may not be a serial killer? 

Tess decides to stay, and this is where "Barbarian" starts playing with our expectations. Because we associate Bill Skarsgård with playing Pennywise the Clown, there's an air of menace to the entire situation. We assume that Keith is probably going to turn out to be a bad guy after all. But firs the turns on the charm, eventually getting Tess to lighten up over a bottle of wine. The two even have a moment that Keith clearly construes as flirtation, but nothing happens. 

The next morning, Keith has left to take care of some things, and Tess heads to her job interview. But when she comes back she's first chased by a homeless man and then discovers what appears to be a secret door in the basement of the house. What's behind that door? Why, a seemingly never-ending tunnel into the depths of the house, of course. 

Again: here is where our expectations get pulled out from under us. Keith eventually returns, and while Tess tells him she's freaked out about the secret basement rooms — especially since there's a section with a dirty bed and an old video camera — Keith is nonplussed. He shrugs it all off as explainable and disappears into the darkness of the tunnel. Is Keith playing some sort of twisted game? Something is clearly up because he goes silent once he disappears into the basement tunnel, refusing to answer Tess' call — until he starts screaming.

Is it a trap? Is Keith really in trouble? Tess, the good person that she is, decides to venture into that darkness to find Keith. And she does, only to discover him terrified. Everything here is pitched to high levels of intensity, and it only gets worse when what appears to be some sort of creature comes out of the darkness and smashes Keith's head into the wall over and over again until it's nothing but a bloody mess. And then the scene cuts to black.

And there we have it! Keith was a harmless nice guy after all! And now he's got no face. 

"Barbarian" is one of the year's exceptionally twisty, shapeshifty horror tales that keeps morphing into new evolutions scene by scene. Zach Cregger starts with a psychological Airbnb thriller that becomes a possible kidnapping lock-in scenario only to explode into a monster movie in the scene Chris has picked. How good does it feel to be truly surprised and rendered gleefully dumbfounded by horror these days, when the genre's become dependable on popular formulas? 

Cregger's comedian persona shines in "Barbarian," but so do nerve-gnawing scares that hit with ferocity like when Bill Skarsgård's head bits redecorate cavern walls. I love this scene as much as I love this whole damn movie — and that's not even when Cregger stops splicing new elements into Barbarian. An effective scare is an effective scare, even better when it's sandwiched through truly unbelievable turns within one of 2022's most maniacal screenplays.