I was about to be eaten alive by a guy in a gimp suit in the trashed bathroom of my once beloved establishment, The Museum of Schlock. Right as Terror was about to sink his metal fangs into me, a noise arose from one of the stalls. It sounded familiar to me, a grunting I’d heard before. The punk in the blue bandana signaled to the punk in the red bandana to go check it out. He approached the stall door, but as soon as he tried to open it, the door collapsed on top of him with tremendous force. Hopping up and down on him was a marsupial in midnight blue trunks. It was Edwige. She had returned to me. — To be continued.

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Tonight’s movie is 2022’s Barbarian from director Zach Cregger. I guess this is an Airbnb from hell movie. I don’t think that’s a genre, but it should be. Why stay in a nice chain motel with a free continental breakfast when you can book a few nights at someone’s crusty one bedroom they failed to flip? Never mind the dark secret that’s waiting for you to discover in the basement.

Our movie begins with a young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) arriving at her Airbnb in Detroit one dark and stormy night. Turns out her Airbnb was double booked and rented out to a young man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård). He suggests Tess stay the night until they can get this sorted in the morning. Tess suspects him at first until she realizes he’s part of a community revitalization effort in Detroit that happens to be the subject of a research job she’s interviewing for the next day. They share a bottle of wine, have some great conversation, but don’t kiss.

The interview goes well for Tess, but she realizes the neighborhood her Airbnb resides in is completely hollowed out. A local vagrant chases her down, but she gets inside the house before he can touch her. Tess calls the police, but there are no available units to come to her aid. She runs out of toilet paper, goes to retrieve some more from the basement, and finds a hidden room with a cot, a video camera attached to a tripod, and a bloody handprint on the wall. Tess freaks out and runs upstairs to find Keith. He decides to investigate the basement himself. This doesn’t go well.

Something brilliant happens about halfway through the movie. We cut to a character named AJ Gilbride (Justin Long), a big time television producer that’s gotten into some legal trouble involving a rape accusation. He goes to Detroit to liquidate some properties to pay for his legal fees and wouldn’t you know it, he’s the owner of the Airbnb. When he checks out his property, he notices Keith’s and Tess’s things lying about the house. When he discovers the secret room and another entrance leading to subterranean depths, AJ’s mind begins thinking of the financial boost this will give his property.

It’s not long before AJ runs into the horrible thing that lives under his house. I almost wish we had gotten a third scenario, one with a bounty hunter looking for AJ after a warrant had been issued for his arrest. 

Barbarian is currently streaming on Hulu. Now if we could just get an Uber Eats horror movie. 

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Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, and episode 575) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.