'Barbarian', the most lively, terrifying, and simultaneously funny film from comedy sitcom director Zach Cregger, is now streaming. Read our review to find out why this horror will be in the top 3 horror films of the year.

A young woman, Tess (Georgina Campbell), arrives in Detroit for a job interview scheduled the next day. She needs a place to stay and prepare for the big event. Tess rents a small house through the AirBnb app in a once-fashionable, now long-abandoned neighborhood.

However, when she tries to enter the dwelling, a strange young man, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), opens the door. It turns out there was a system error in the app — the house is already rented, and there's no time or energy to sort it out with the company. It's nighttime, pouring rain, and the area is full of abandoned buildings inhabited by clearly unsavory characters. Only one option remains: accept the stranger's offer to stay the night in the house and give AirBnb a piece of her mind in the morning.

It's impossible to describe what happens next without spoilers. Because renowned comedy sitcom director Zach Cregger has made an extremely eclectic horror film where everything that happens resembles a sinister theme park ride. First it's scary and dark, then bright and funny, and then back to a dark earthen basement where pain, fear, and primal terror reign. Cregger randomly throws a whole collection of classic genre tropes onto the screen, where it all once began with a single final girl ('The Texas Chain Saw Massacre') and ended with a session of hypnosis and submission.

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From the very beginning, 'Barbarian' constantly confuses the viewer. The first act is almost a Hitchcockian thriller about a mysterious stranger in a house and his unexpected victim. But here the director hides another twist that breaks the mold. The girl is not naive; she's seen and read enough about such types to be extremely cautious — she doesn't drink the offered tea, refuses the wine, and never lets the suspicious, yet quite charming, guy out of her sight.

The second act turns everything upside down again. It turns out the real fear wasn't her neighbor, but the horrifying creature in the basement where both of them end up due to natural, banal curiosity. In the third act, everything devolves into a comedy about a brash and self-assured producer, AJ (a standout role for [Justin Long]), who has been fired from yet another project under suspicion of rape. By an unfortunate coincidence, he owns the very house where Tess and Keith are staying. It's around this character that the main engine of humor revolves, which, by the way, significantly encroaches on the initially stated horror genre.

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Ultimately, all three points of reference in the film converge into one — a dark, damp basement where the heroes of 'Barbarian' are destined not only to meet the titular monster but also for another didactic exercise (because where would modern horror be without one?). Namely: enumerating relevant themes of ostracism and urbanization, as well as manic parental overprotection and the danger of random encounters. But fortunately, Zach Cregger never intended to get bogged down in tedious moralizing. He clearly maintains the film's main line (despite all the twists and turns), reserving the right to simply laugh at everything happening around them.

'Barbarian' is interesting to watch not only because of the question 'What will happen next?' Cregger hooks the viewer on a purely physiological level. The film is original, multi-layered, not devoid of an original form, though secondary in content. The last point, by the way, Cregger doesn't deny: quotes from classic horrors in his film come thick and fast.

So, to summarize the above, we can say that 'Barbarian' is a cool, edgy, thrilling movie with excellent genre taste and a killer sense of humor. The director confidently guides this adrenaline-packed plot toward a formulaic, yet not unimaginative, finale full of anxiety and nervous laughs of relief that it's finally over.