"Barbarians" a barbed black comedy turned taut home-invasion thriller

 

Barbarians (2022)

Do awkward dinner parties ever actually end well in the movies? “Barbarians” doesn’t unfold like a conventional entry in the home-invasion sub-genre, and writer-director Charles Dorfman gives us an early taste of something off-kilter and uses it to his advantage for the first 45 minutes. Tightening like a vise, Dorfman’s writing-directing debut works as a barbed black comedy of manners (think Roman Polanski's "Carnage") where tensions keep bubbling over the civilized setting until exploding during dessert. “Barbarians” finally morphs into more of a home-invasion thriller, and a solidly effective one at that.

The film begins with a faux real-estate promotional video for a family farm being developed into a tranquil getaway with fake smiles and then jarringly jump cuts to something bloody. That commercial video’s director is Adam (Iwan Rheon), an aspiring screenwriter, and he and artist Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) are the first leaseholders of this modern model home in the English countryside. During their stay, Eva has been sculpting a solstice monolith in the backyard that’s ready to be unveiled. The handsome, smarmy property developer Lucas (Tom Cullen) is also their old friend, and while he puts on a face for his social media following after the property’s patriarch dies of a heart attack, Lucas is out for himself. 

It happens to be Adam’s birthday, so Lucas and his wife Chloe (Inès Spiridonov) make the drive to celebrate Adam’s birthday over dinner and finalize the sale of the couple’s dream house. Adam is already on edge and uncertain about the way his life is going, but with Lucas and his alpha-male energy there, he begins to feel increasingly emasculated. When the doorbell rings just as secrets are aired out, tensions are high, and the party has come to an end, a trio of Druid-masked men invites themselves in with a shotgun raised. Who are the real barbarians here? 

As a mere social critique, “Barbarians” has plenty of ideas in its head to be more than just a knock-off of “Funny Games,” “You’re Next,” or a whole bevy of other like-minded thrillers. Capitalism, toxic masculinity, cowardice, differing political viewpoints, gender roles being tested, and “Encino Man,” all these themes and ideas are stealthily broached through dinner conversation and in the narrative as characters connect with each other. The main couple’s names also aren’t just Adam and Eva because writer-director Charles Dorfman likes those names. Going in step with the metaphor of Eden, there’s portentous foreshadowing with an injured fox, its leg caught in barbwire, that Adam finds on a run and then somehow finds back in his kitchen. Once the wordless home invaders do show up halfway through the film, the spiraling social situation only gets more harrowing. The leader makes hand gestures and then very chillingly vandalizes artwork and makes a mess out of the house as if it were an avant-garde dance, not unlike Alex and his droogs from “A Clockwork Orange.” 

A taut pressure cooker even before the other shoe drops, “Barbarians” knows exactly what it’s doing. There’s already a great source of prickly tension in getting these four characters together, and in one darkly playful flourish, Dorfman employs a musical sting with the first few title cards that will make one jump. Iwan Rheon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Tom Cullen, and Inès Spiridonov each bring enough interesting shadings to form a ping-pong dynamic. Even as all of these characters are flawed and worthy of learning a lesson or two, we do root for them to get the jump on their assailants. Dorfman does purposefully hold back from too much savagery, but the violence is still cruel and feels dangerous enough that anything could happen. Before ultimately not amounting to a whole lot, “Barbarians” escalates beautifully with bite and verve.

Grade: B

IFC Midnight released “Barbarians” (91 min.) in select theaters and on demand on April 1, 2022.