barbarians movie review 2022

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The horror movie trope about how you shouldn’t build housing tracts on indigenous lands used to be considered a mildly progressive one. Nowadays it looks a little patronizing, to say the least. And given that recent developments in historical interpretation have revealed that, to put it in simplistically blunt terms, all land is in some form indigenous, the trope seems narrow as well. (This is one of the reasons, indirectly, that Jordan Peele ’s “ Us ” felt like something new.)

In any event, when “Barbarians” opens with a promotional video in which Tom Cullen ’s Lucas, an instantly smarmy beardo, touts a new idyllic community at a site in rural England called “Gaeta” (the Gallic word for "gateway"), one arches an eyebrow a little. And perhaps one also asks, “And where are they now, the little people of Stonehenge?” One supposes it’s at least commendable that “Barbarians,” a horror movie that aspires to stress you out early-Ben-Wheatley style, albeit under the direction of Charles Dorfman instead, doesn’t quite go to that obvious place.

In spite of a couple of intimations of the supernatural, which involve a fox and are quickly dropped, the film’s conflicts stay earthbound, and as the title suggests, are engineered to make Points About How Despite The Veneer Of Civilization Modern Man Remains To Some Extent In A Primordial State. Lucas’ opening video pitch is disrupted by a shot of Lucas in a dark place, his forehead covered in blood, wrapping up his pitch. Um-hmm.

We are then introduced to Adam ( Iwan Rheon ) and Eva ( Catalina Sandino Moreno ), who are apparently the first residents in the lovely Gateway development. They’ve earned the house in exchange for creative services they’ve rendered unto Lucas, or so they believe. At a dinner party later that evening, Lucas will try to welch on the deal. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a beautiful morning at the house, and it’s Adam’s birthday, and he goes out for a run, where he encounters a dead fox. Which then turns up inside the couple’s kitchen. Which makes Adam fretful. A neighbor of sorts helps clean it up. But Eva is exasperated by Adam’s waffling.

Adam has some troubles with his conscience, too. He Googles himself, and down that rabbit hole, he reads news stories about Lucas and the development, and how a former partner of Lucas, who owned the land on which this lovely house was built, died of a heart attack soon after initiating a lawsuit against Lucas.

So the stage is set for an uneasy dinner. Lucas shows up with girlfriend Chloe ( Inès Spiridonov ), a young artist who’s also an ardent admirer of Eva’s. Everyone seems to enjoy busting on Adam. He announces the topic of his latest creative project, about a “prehistoric man in the modern world,” and the entire table explodes in mirth, citing Brendan Fraser and “Encino Man,” which apparently was titled “California Man” in the U.K. As Adam and Lucas exchange toxic banter, one is inclined to wonder whether Adam is EVEN a Beta male.

But wait. Adam gets tetchy when word slips out that Chloe is pregnant, and he confronts her when she visits the bathroom. These two have a past, apparently, but Chloe instructs him that “it never happened.”

And then the home invasion happens. If you’ve been paying attention, the subsequent “revelations” will come as no surprise, and the plot turns will bear out why the characters have the names Dorfman has given them. The director carries out his ultimately banal aims with commendable dispatch, and it’s always interesting to see Moreno play a character who’s not a living saint (she’s done it before, I know, but I’ve not seen it too often myself). But as an individual who’s not likely to have his dream house handed to him anytime soon under any circumstances, shady or not, I couldn’t relate. 

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Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Barbarians (2022)

Tom Cullen as Lucas

Inès Spiridonov as Chloe

Iwan Rheon as Adam

Catalina Sandino Moreno as Eva

Connor Swindells as Dan

Tommy McDonnell as Neil

Will Kemp as John

Kevin Ryan as Alan Wickes

• Charles Dorfman

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• Statten Roeg

Cinematographer

• Charlie Herranz
• Tommy Boulding
• Marc Canham

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Home » Movie Reviews » Barbarian (2022) movie review

Barbarian Movie Review: Zach Cregger Delivers Singular, Brutal Horror Vision

Barbarian is directed by zach cregger and stars georgina campbell, bill skarsgård and justin long.

Review: Barbarian is one of the wildest movies I’ve seen in years. An unpredictable ride with a perfect cast and unthinkable premise.

(Quick warning before you read on about what might possibly be the most batshit insane movie of the calendar year: please go into Barbarian reading as little as possible. Just know that it is not for the faint of heart and that it is gnarly and extreme.)

Now onto the actual review.

Barbarian is the latest in a string of original horror/thriller films being released to kick off the fall movie season. It’s been a mixed bag for the horror genre in 2022, much like it is for most years, but it seems like the highs have been even higher than in years past. Genre auteurs like Jordan Peele, Ti West, David Cronenberg and others have given efforts that rival even their best works in years past. We can officially enter Barbarian and Zach Cregger into this pool of the very best that horror has had to offer in 2022.

Horror is a genre that is self-reflexive by nature. Scares and setups of films past reinvigorate and strengthen those in newer films. Stylistic choices and narrative beats (found footage and final girls being two prime examples of this) and brought down generation to generation to be reinvented and twisted with how a filmmaker sees fit. The best crop of these films are the ones that don’t just use the tropes, but successfully navigate and toy with the audience while doing so. Barbarian is perhaps the best example of this in years.

Barbarian is an extremely winking film. Its casting of Bill Skarsgård as the possibly innocent/possibly sadistic murderer co-inhabitant of a sketchy Airbnb is enough to drive even the casual horror fans up a wall after his notorious and career-making work as Pennywise the Clown in the recent It franchise. He manages to successfully balance these different character beats in a performance that teeters on predictability, but never fully goes there.

Read Reviews for Movies like Barbarian (2022)

Its plot isn’t going to work for everyone, and I can’t really say it landed 100% with me. It secretly becomes an anthology film with its weaving of several plotlines into an eventual final thirty minutes of cohesion. Georgina Campbell and Justin Long carry the majority of Barbarian ’s heavy lifting even if their characters struggle to morph out of caricatures into actual human beings. The film mostly banks on shock factor, and it can live off of that just fine, but when it is trying to tie up loose ends and build to a finale that feels both rewarding and justified, it doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Barbarian is still refreshing and thrilling, and it’s easily one of my favorite theater experiences of the year. Films try over and over again to use the schlocky marketing bit of audiences screaming in theaters only to be disappointing in actual terror when places in front of you (just this year The Black Phone fits that description) but Barbarian is genuinely jaw-dropping. It’s gonzo and brutal and absolutely one of my favorite horror flicks of the year. Make sure to seek this one out if it’s playing near you, but like I said in the opening paragraph, I hope you’ve already seen it by the time you make it this far.

Genre: Horror , Mystery , Thriller

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Barbarian Movie Cast and Credits

Georgina Campbell as Tess

Bill Skarsgård as Keith

Justin Long as AJ

Richard Brake as Frank

Matthew Patrick Davis as The Mother

Director: Zach Cregger

Writer: Zach Cregger

Cinematography: Zach Kuperstein

Editor: Joe Murphy

Composer: Anna Drubich

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Barbarian movie on IMDb

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Barbarians (United Kingdom, 2021)

Barbarians starts out as a tense psychological thriller unfolding against the tableau of a not-so-friendly dinner before morphing into something decidedly physical and creepy. Yet the home invasion that flips the movie at the halfway point doesn’t go quite as deeply into Funny Games territory as it initially appears to venture. The title speaks not to a particular group or individual but to innate tendencies that reside deep within all human beings, no matter how cultured and civilized they may appear to be.

Barbarians is essentially a four-character play transpiring within a sprawling show home set in the English countryside. That’s where sculptor Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) has decided to celebrate the 30 th birthday of her partner, Adam (Iwan Rheon). Not only is it a good place for an intimate get-together with friends but it’s also the dream home where they hope to settle down. Not coincidentally, the male half of the couple they are inviting for the get-together, Lucas (Tom Cullen), is the developer who cont the property. His “plus-one” is girlfriend Chloe (Ines Spiridonov), who has just discovered that she’s pregnant.

If there’s a knock against the movie, which unspools in an economical 90 minutes, it’s that the characters and their relationships are ill-formed. We get bits and pieces during the first half but much is unrevealed. The romantic pairings – Eva and Adam, Lucas and Chloe – don’t gel and underlying tensions (sexual and otherwise) are left unexplored. The twist that propels the second half is effectively jarring, however, and once the movie enters the home invasion territory, it milks the situation for maximum suspense while at the same time hinting that all may not be what it seems to be. Druidic cultists looking like rejects from The Purge ? Perhaps not.

For those on the lookout for a deeper meaning, Barbarians can be seen as a takedown of toxic masculinity, a condemnation of cultural appropriation, and a critique of entitlement. However, although those aspects can be found in the subtext, this is first and foremost a thriller/horror movie that trades in tension and suspense both of the slow-boil kind (during the dinner sequences) and the more traditional form (during the home invasion). Viewed through that lens, Charles Dorfman’s venture into this familiar milieu is sufficiently well-made to make it worth the time. And, unlike too many recent thrillers, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

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Barbarian (2022)

• User Reviews
• Why did the double booking happen? Was it just a happenstance plot device that was the only way the story could occur?
• Why did the rental company deny that Keith and Tess were there once AJ showed up?
• Why did the person conducting Tess' job interview say that the area Tess was staying in is one she should not be in? It had a very sinister tone without a real purpose. Maybe she just thought a girl shouldn't be alone by herself in a rough area.
• What about the guy who originally lived in the house? Was all that just to give context to the camera room and such? Why'd he have 10 minutes of screen time to himself if he was gonna go out the way he did?
• Was the house haunted by ghosts or just the energy of this monstrous lady living in the underground below the home?

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Movie Review – Barbarian (2022)

December 13, 2022 by Robert Kojder

Barbarian , 2022.

Written and Directed by Zach Cregger. Starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler, Jaymes Butler, Sophie Sörensen, Rachel Fowler, J.R. Esposito, Kate Nichols, Kate Bosworth, Brooke Dillman, Sara Paxton, Will Greenberg, Derek Morse, Trevor Van Uden, and Zach Cregger.

SYNOPSIS: 

A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.

Filmmakers seem to have a new favorite go-to plot device with countless recent movies (spanning multiple genres) that set up their story through accidentally double-booked Airbnbs. Barbarian (written and directed by Zach Cregger, marking his first feature-length work without his regular collaborator Trevor Moore) might be filled with more insanity than all of the others combined.

This is boosted by also being unpredictable in every sense of the word, for better or worse. This movie doesn’t throw curveballs, it throws knuckle-curves on a consistent basis, as Zach Cregger fiddles around with structure and clashing tones that further befuddle the mind of what is happening and what can possibly happen next.

Rather than discuss the characters first, considering such a thing becomes a spoiler in itself beyond the first act, it feels more fitting to address the setting and location of Barbarian . The aforementioned Airbnb sits in a dumpy part of Detroit. At least that’s how the white characters describe the area Tess (Georgina Campbell) happens to be staying in while taking up a job interview as a researcher for an upcoming documentary.

They don’t elaborate, but from the look of things, the houses are falling apart and the community is heavily Black. There is a story about gentrification, incompetent law enforcement, sexual abuse, horrifying basement secrets, and morality here told through gonzo madness that, while it certainly tests logic and credibility, marks the arrival of an unfettered, deranged mind.

Surprising the audience is Zach Cregger’s modus operandi, as Barbarian doesn’t actually have much to say about the social issues it incorporates into its narrative. They are still effective and slide into the story nicely, but given the all-over-the-map trajectory, there are some aspects that get under one’s skin as creepy and disturbing but never quite a shellshock.

If anything, Barbarian functions as a weirdo horror funhouse that zigs just when you think it’s going to zag. There is also a healthy amount of tension since the film has no interest in settling down in one scenario or dynamic or even one genre (the second act is more of a comedy surrounded by all this terror).

Also, credit the entire ensemble game enough to roll with every decision grounded in madness. Georgina Campbell plays Tess with resourceful awareness, especially as a woman that has arrived at an Airbnb already occupied by polite oddball Keith (Bill Skarsgård), justifiably on guard staying the night with a stranger.

Justin Long is also a hoot as a self-absorbed misogynistic doofus that owns the home. Without disclosing the role Michael Patrick Davis plays, it deserves to be noted that his performance is exceptionally freaky and that the makeup and prosthetics department deserves applause. Richard Brake also shows up for a few minutes, effectively slimy and gross in a manner that ties much of the story together.

Zach Cregger shows a lot of promise in terms of twisted imagination, but that doesn’t mean every screenwriting choice he makes is a winner (it’s hard to buy into that anyone would willingly book this house for a variety of reasons, which is a gripe that becomes an afterthought considering the crazy places this movie goes).

There are plenty of red herrings and misdirection here that feel cheap, even if the end result is an easily recommendable nutty ride resulting from some of those swerves. At this early stage of his career, he is a more talented director capable of consistently engaging an audience through mystery, tracking shots, turning clichés on their head, creating a sinister atmosphere, and operating under uncomfortably dark themes.

Mileage will vary for Barbarian depending on how much thought one puts into each ludicrous reveal, but it is so chaotically unhinged everyone should see it at least once.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Barbarian Review (2022 Movie)

Barbarian is a twisted, shocking, surprising, and downright weird movie. All of these things come together to make it one of the best thrillers in years.

Barbarian is one of the most insane thrillers that has been released in years. It is one of those movies that will sit with viewers for days, weeks, even months, as they think about the wild ride that they went on. This film is a ton of fun, from start to finish (and especially in the middle).

Going in to much more detail than that is going to be difficult, as Barbarian truly deserves for audiences to go in completely blind, knowing nothing about the film or what they are about to experience. It is highly recommended that you see this one in a packed theater with a crowd that is unafraid to get loud. Yell at the screen, scream during the jump scares, and just have fun, because at the heart of it, that is what this film is all about.

Inspired by a chapter in a book that details all the little red flags that should be noted during a conversation, writer director Zach Cregger did not start out with the intention of writing a full movie. Instead he thought it would be fun to create a scene where two people meet, and one of them exhibits red flags, perhaps unknowingly, by doing things such as compliments, favors, and touching that is not asked for. 

That is how Barbarian starts — part romantic comedy, part thriller — but as it goes on it develops into something so totally different. This movie is extremely unique and quite frankly, unlike anything that has been seen before. It just keeps twisting and turning, with almost every pivotal moment in the script being a surprise. 

Barbarian is very well written. It is smart, clever, and terrifying. The scary moments don’t always come from expected sources either, and we are not just talking about the jump scares here. This movie explores what a monster is, what a barbarian is, in a way that makes real life truly horrifying. 

Viewers will connect with the most unexpected characters, as well as love to hate others. Clocking in at just one hour and forty-two minutes, Barbarians flies by. There are intense and suspenseful moments where the audience can sit with what the heck is going on, but they are never left there too long that they will be checking their watch and eager to leave. 

The writing is brilliant and while there are some minimal issues, nothing takes away from the sheer wonder of it all. Zach Cregger is clearly inspired by Sam Raimi, who is one of the best in the horror business, but Barbarians doesn’t seem like an imitation of his work. 

This film has blood, gore, and some incredible chase sequences. It is shocking, terrifying, and somehow also quite funny. Barbarians is best seen on the big screen, in a room full of people that all have no clue what they are in for. Trust us, you won’t see anything coming — and that is what works so well about it. 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Next: how “the gift of fear” inspired barbarian.

About Barbarian

A young woman discovers the rental home she booked is already occupied by a stranger. Against her better judgment, she decides to spend the night but soon discovers there’s a lot more to fear than just an unexpected house guest.

Barbarian comes to theaters September 9th.

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Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.

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Barbarian Reviews

Barbarian is a flick that shines with potential and still manages to stand as a worthy watch for any fan of the horror genre.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 25, 2023

With Barbarian Cregger clearly knows what he’s doing with a horror film. He’s absolutely aware of the tropes and pulls the audience in, tricks them, pulls them in again, and comes up with bizarre and visceral horror.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2023

Zach Cregger's unique storytelling in the horror film will leave any viewer baffled, transforming a generic premise into a truly captivating, suspenseful, thematically rich story where the definition of a "good person" is brilliantly explored.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 25, 2023

A twisted, sadistic, hilarious, bonkers & down right insane movie

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

With stellar performances, a unique premise, a boatload of scares and horror visuals that'll be engraved into your brain for life, it's one of the best horror flicks to release this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

Horror movies are often undone with a PG-13 rating, so it can find a larger audience. For that reason alone, the R-rated "Barbarian" is something to relish.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 16, 2023

One of 2022's 20 best films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 13, 2023

If you like intense, incredible stressful horror films, this is right up your ally.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2023

I haven’t had this much fun watching a horror movie in years.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 6, 2023

Barbarian has the framings of the perfect first time horror film. Has some of the creepiest setups and executions of horror this year. This is bloody, disturbing, trippy, but at times feels very unbelievable & characters make questionable decisions during

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Jan 1, 2023

Zach Cregger’s Sam Raimi-esque film is best watched knowing nothing about it, but rest assured it will deliver on frights, laughs, and utterly brazen entertainment.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2022

Like that X-Files episode “Home,” glazed in intergenerational and gendered dread, where women are feared instead of adored.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2022

…the solution isn’t wildly imaginative, but getting there is all the fun, and if you can handle the adult themes, Barbarian should knock the stuffing out of you…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 20, 2022

The less you know about Barbarian going in the better, but know that it gives new meaning to the phrase bargain-basement.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 10, 2022

Doesn't quite stick the landing, but Barbarian's plot twists and turns make for one of the more surprising horror offerings of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2022

I was hoping for something fresh rather than freshly disturbing, but I can't argue I wasn't entertained. The formula brings nothing new to the table, but the packaging does enough to make you think it has.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 2, 2022

Like the best horrors, it's 'about' stuff -- gentrification, abuse, toxic masculinity, taking responsibility. There's also plenty of jump scares.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2022

Still, even if a few ideas and characters could be fleshed out more, Barbarian is brutal, insane, unrelenting horror film that feels offbeat and wholly original.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 30, 2022

A hilarious and enervating offer that replicates and rebuilds extremely familiar resources with enough intelligence to shape one of the great horror films of 2022.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2022

Barbarian is a bold, bonkers but ultimately frustrating horror. Where it is an unbridled success however is as an advert for never booking an Airbnb ever again!

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 13, 2022

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‘Barbarians’ Review: Unexpected Visitors

In this new thriller set in the countryside, tension mounts between two men until a home invasion takes it to homicidal heights.

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By Lena Wilson

The new thriller “Barbarians” might look familiar to those acquainted with the director Lars von Trier’s 2009 film, “ Antichrist .” Both movies center on a wealthy couple in the countryside destined for violent encounters, as portended by a dying fox. But where “Antichrist” depicts a crisis of femininity, as a wife is overtaken by madness, “Barbarians,” in the directorial debut by Charles Dorfman, is all about masculinity.

The couple in “Barbarians” is Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and Adam (Iwan Rheon) — she a wildly successful sculptor and he a mediocre director. It is Adam’s birthday, and he must decide whether to commit to his girlfriend and buy a dreamy, rural estate with her. That choice becomes less clear-cut when his longtime frenemy, Lucas (Tom Cullen), a real estate developer who owns the house, arrives for dinner with his girlfriend, Chloe (Inès Spiridonov). Lucas appears to be everything Adam isn’t: swaggering, successful, tall. Tension between the two men mounts until a home invasion takes it to homicidal heights.

I find the idea of a small man feeling emasculated by his thriving girlfriend tiresome enough in real life, and Dorfman, who also wrote the script, doesn’t manage to elevate it for the big screen. Aside from some cool aerial shots and an always excellent Cullen, there’s not much worth fussing about.

Despite their biblical names, Adam and Eva learn little from their time in Eden. The film hinges on Adam’s ability to kill: He couldn’t put the fox out of its misery, but his stomach becomes stronger as he proves his masculinity through brute strength.

“Antichrist” may have been chauvinistic in its own right, but at least it was interesting to watch. “Barbarians” doesn’t provide much excitement at all.

Barbarians Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV , Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

Lena Wilson is a project manager at The New York Times and a freelance writer covering film, TV, technology and lesbian culture. More about Lena Wilson

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It may portend talent, but ‘The Watchers’ is just barely watchable

A second-generation Shyamalan’s first movie is undercooked horror.

The crab apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

“The Watchers” is the debut feature of writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for the work of M. Night Shyamalan, the film’s producer and the filmmaker’s father. Shyamalan the elder makes suspense-horror dramas that either give a half-baked idea a fully baked cinematic treatment or vice versa; Shyamalan the daughter’s first feature-length film is just half-baked all around. But she’s only 24 and deserves to be reevaluated after she’s made a few more movies on her own.

The plot is the usual Shyamalanarama, so much so that viewers who saw M. Night’s most recent outing, “Knock at the Cabin,” may experience a frisson of déjà vu. Mina (Dakota Fanning), a dour American living in Dublin while she wrestles with guilt over a long-ago family tragedy, is told by her boss at a pet shop to deliver a bird to a buyer in Galway, a drive that requires her to cross an eldritch and isolated patch of forest in West Ireland from which we’re informed “no one comes out.” The filmmakers dandle little bits of Hitchcock to tantalize us: that bird in its gilded cage — a lovely orange conure named Darwin — and a few errant “Psycho”-esque strings on the soundtrack.

No such luck. After losing her way in the dense fog of trees, Mina is chased by something that skitters and snarls to a bunker in the middle of nowhere, where three other unlucky souls have already holed up. By day, they’re allowed to wander freely through the forest. By night, they have to return and stand in front of a wall-size one-way mirror while the ravenous beasts outside … watch them.

That’s all; they just watch them. One is reminded of M. Night Shyamalan movies that work furiously to scare us with things that aren’t very scary, the lethal tree pollen in “The Happening” at the top of that list. Exactly who is watching the trapped humans? “The Watchers” teases it out for the longest time, although if you have any knowledge of Celtic folklore, consider yourself a step ahead.

The larger problem is that after a visually expansive opening in which the forest is established as a place of lush, claustrophobic unease, the movie goes inside and pretty much stays inside while its cast endlessly chatters about following “the rules” and whether they’ll be able to get away. It’s “No Exit” reimagined as an escape room, and you’re stuck with your crazy aunt.

The Irish actress and stage director Olwen Fouéré has the latter role, as a wild-haired mythology professor named Madeline, who seems to know everything about the creatures outside. Fouéré is the only person here who realizes she’s working with trash, and she bites into her lines with a hammy relish that stays just this side of camp. The other prisoners are Danny (Oliver Finnegan), a shifty and weak-minded young man, and Ciara, who’s played by Georgina Campbell, the star of 2022’s “Barbarian.” That’s a movie to watch if you really want the bejesus scared out of you.

And then there’s Fanning, who in her days as a child actress came on like Bette Davis reincarnated as an 8-year-old, but has struggled to find good roles as an adult. (Her most indelible recent big-screen performance came in 2019 as a numbly menacing Squeaky Fromme in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”) Fanning roots “The Watchers” in Mina’s levelheadedness, but there’s only so much she can do when her director is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. The tragedy in Mina’s past keeps hinting at an emotional climax that never fully pays off, just as Shyamalan’s visual and contextual playing with the theme of doubles fails to come to a point.

But it does give us a spooky sequence of two Minas at that mirrored window, the line separating image from reality smudged into invisibility. And when “The Watchers” shows us more than a glimpse of its otherworldly title critters, it hints at an immensity too large for the human mind to contemplate. At such moments, you realize there’s a talent here. But maybe it’s time for the kid to leave home.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains violence, terror and some thematic elements. 101 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com .

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‘The Watchers’ Review: Ishana Night Shyamalan’s Debut Is an Elegant Supernatural Horror Movie That Gets Lost in the Woods

David ehrlich.

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If there’s much about her debut that left me wishing the apple had fallen a little further from the tree, there’s also no denying that the “ Unbreakable ” filmmaker’s daughter has the skill to follow in her father’s footsteps, which she does here even when the material is begging her to blaze her own trail. And yet, frustrating as it can be at times, the young Shyamalan’s loyal devotion to the family brand proves strangely appropriate for a story this fraught with parental baggage, parroted behavior, and the life-or-death need to satisfy the expectations of an audience who will tear you apart the minute you turn your back on them.  Related Stories The New ‘Hunger Games’ Book Is Already Being Turned Into a Movie — and It Has a Release Date ‘Sisi & I’ Trailer: Sandra Hüller Is a Lady-in-Waiting to Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary

In “The Watchers,” that audience has claws big enough to scratch permanent scrape marks into a pane of bullet-proof glass. Those violent grooves are the first thing we notice about the brutalist concrete building where Mina (a sullen but headstrong Dakota Fanning) takes shelter after her car breaks down in an unmarked forest somewhere between Galway — where the downtrodden expat works at a pet store, vaping her pain away during breaks — and Belfast , where she’s been tasked with delivering a golden parrot to a customer.

Don’t go out after dark. Never wander too far into the woods. Stay away from the burrows where the creatures sleep during the daytime, and always do what you can to put on a good show for them at night. Shyamalan’s adaptation is extremely faithful to the plot and tradition of the 2022 A.M. Shine novel on which it’s based, but only in a way that leaves you wondering how much his book might have borrowed from “The Village” in the first place.

Where the elder Shyamalan’s movie adopted the look and language of a 19th-century Pennsylvania commune, Ishana’s decidedly modern take riffs on the panopticon-like voyeurism of reality TV. Mina’s voiceover describes the forest around the Coop as a place that “draws in lost souls like moths to a flame,” and the same could be said of “Love Island” (or the “Love Island” knock-off that Mina is forced to watch over and over again on DVD as her time in the Watchers’ domain stretches on), which similarly encourages people to indulge in their worst selves for a viewing audience that loathes and envies them in equal measure.

Shyamalan is far more interested in exploring the woods than she is in fleshing out any of her characters (Daniel ran away from an abusive dad, Madeline used to be a teacher, Ciara likes to dance… the end), but her film is well-served by playing to its strengths, and “The Watchers” is at its most grippingly tense whenever Mina goes looking for trouble. The mystery of the forest is unraveled with the patience and precision of a storyteller who inherited her father’s belief that what we don’t see is always scarier and more interesting than what we do, and while the nerve-shredding sequences where Mina spelunks through the burrows or stays out of the Coop all night can be overly reliant on jump-scares, those jolts are rooted in a solid foundation of well-earned suspense (and further supported by the inviting flatness of Fanning’s devil-may-care affect). 

But it does. Fast. And with a maddening disregard for why the first half of this movie was intriguing in ways that had nothing to do with its central mystery. After carefully teasing out breadcrumbs of information over the course of an hour, “The Watchers” flies the Coop before it convinces to care about the people caged inside of it — only to waste its stockpile of intrigue on a labored and nonsensical series of info dumps that confirm your worst suspicions at the same time as they deny viewers the chance to entertain any new ones. 

If Shine’s novel suffered from a similar problem, Shyamalan doesn’t make any effort to smooth it out. The sudden onslaught of exposition displaces whatever mild investment this movie has earned in its characters until that point, and the decision to resolve the main conflict after only 75 minutes or so makes it all too obvious that “The Watchers” is saving time for its big twist, blunting its impact even as Shyamalan teases the reveal — and a sequel! — at the expense of fleshing out what any of this could mean for our heroine. 

Warner Bros. will release “The Watchers” in theaters on Friday, June 7.

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