Barbarian
Short description
A young woman named Tess travels to Detroit for a job interview and rents a house for her stay. Arriving late at night, she finds the booking has been double-taken and that a man she does not know, Keith, is already inside. Reluctant to look for another place at that hour, she decides to spend the night there anyway, and soon comes to realise that the house holds far more to fear than an unexpected housemate. Zach Cregger wrote and directed the film, which followed his earlier comedy Miss March (2009) and came before Weapons (2025), Resident Evil (2026) and The Flood (2028) in his filmography. Georgina Campbell plays Tess, with Bill Skarsgård as Keith, Justin Long as AJ and Richard Brake as Frank among the credited cast of twenty-one.
The production had a budget of five million dollars and took roughly forty-five million dollars worldwide, a strong return on a modest outlay. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 256,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.9 out of 10 from about 3,500 votes, indicating broad audience approval alongside a smaller, highly engaged voting base. A critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 212 reviews places professional response slightly above the two audience scores. Produced by 20th Century Studios, Regency Enterprises, Vertigo Entertainment and BoulderLight Pictures, it runs 103 minutes and blends horror with mystery and thriller elements.
What's left behind the scenes
- Richard Brake, who played Frank, described in social media how he once went to see this film in a cinema during a late showing. Nearby, in the auditorium, was a group of teenagers who were clearly impressed by the film. After the screening, the lights in the hall were inexplicably not turned on, and the audience began to make their way out in the light of their phone flashlights – the light fell on Brake’s face, the teenagers recognized him and fled in terror.
- Zach Cregger wrote the screenplay after reading Gavin de Becker's book 'The Gift of Fear' (1997), which advises women to trust their intuition when encountering men who appear dangerous. Cregger began writing a short film, but liked it so much that he decided to turn it into a feature film.
- Zak Kreggar made it a rule not to use technologies in special effects that John Carpenter didn't have when he filmed "The Thing" in 1982. The only digital effects used in this film are perhaps the grass shown in the flashback about the 1980s.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
