The setting makes “Barbarian,” a movie about the worst Airbnb stay in the history of man.
In honor of the Halloween holiday this weekend, we’re reposting a (slightly edited) review of Barbarian, a scary movie released in 2022.
Halloween is this weekend, and so I’ve been watching scary movies. I’m only good for a couple of these a year, so I try to make them count. I’ve watched Near Dark. I’ve watched Phantasm. I’m planning on watching The Hills Have Eyes. But there’s already one that’s a cut above the rest:
This movie is called “Barbarian,” which is an apt name because it has some pretty savage moments. Barbaric, even! And it hits the hardest if you go into it knowing as little as possible about its story. So I won’t spoil it, nor will the above clip, beyond saying the movie begins with a woman having some trouble while checking into an Airbnb rental in a forlorn section of Detroit. And that’s important, because there are parts of that city that work very well as the backdrop to an unhinged horror flick.
I say this is a credit to Detroit. It has a distinct look to it that can lend itself to all kinds of genres, as evidenced by movies like “Gran Torino” or the more recent period crime film “No Sudden Move” – which is great, by the way, definitely check that one out!.
But some really good horror movies have taken advantage of Detroit’s environs too. “It Follows,” which is a cursed ghost story and a rumination on sex and mortality, takes place in and around the city. “Only Lovers Left Alive,” the 2013 vampire romance directed by Jim Jarmusch, is set there as well. And so is “Barbarian,” which simply wouldn’t be as effective as it is if it were set in a location less desolate than the depopulated neighborhood of Brightmoor. While most of the movie takes place indoors and was filmed on sets in Bulgaria, the filmmakers still attempted to root their story in this corner of the Motor City. Many of its exterior shots are of the actual neighborhood.
That said: Brightmoor a real place and a home to real people who are working very hard to revive it. The neighborhood isn’t as apocalyptic as this flick would have you believe – this is only a movie, of course – but it can reasonably pass as apocalyptic because it’s beset by blight, which is the result of deindustrialization decades ago. Brightmoor itself was developed in the 1920s to house immigrants and new arrivals from the Great Migration who moved there to find work in auto factories. The Detroit of 1950s, as seen in “No Sudden Move,” is flush with those factories and jobs. In the decades that followed, many factories left the city and so did the white population that had the means to do so. The residents left behind, typically African American, had to contend with little opportunities for work, deteriorating city services and a corresponding rise in crime.
Here’s how it was put in a 2016 report released by the Alliance for American Manufacturing on this very topic:
“Barbarian” works, I declare, because of this setting. The desolation and emptiness are integral to the dread you feel as the movie’s protagonist suffers through what would be the worst Airbnb experience of all time. And while not all of Detroit can pass as this bombed out, this setting can be found there because of the deindustrialization the city and its residents have suffered.
So I guess, uh, we got a few good movies out of that national experience?
“Barbarian” can be streamed on HBO Max and Netflix, and rented or purchased through platforms like Amazon Prime and Hulu. You should watch it! And while you’re peeking at it through your fingers, consider the location the filmmakers set this story in. There’s a whole economic history that helped create it.