Barbarian (2022) Movie Explained (Plot And Ending Explained)


Curiosity often leads us to the most unexpected places, and in the movie Barbarian, that curiosity takes center stage. The film follows the journey of two houseguests who quickly realize they’ve been double-booked for their stay. However, what begins as a mere mix-up soon escalates into a spine-chilling discovery. Here is what you need to know about Barbarian (2022) – plot and ending explained. Warning – spoilers ahead. Just pay people to do your homework now and watch a movie before reading the review.

Introduction 

A story about double booking is a nightmare in itself. However, Barbarian took it even further, bringing the story to an abandoned area in Detroit with dire and old secrets. The movie starts with the main character, Tess, arriving at her Airbnb house only to discover it has already been rented by a guy named Keith. 

The movie plays with viewers’ sense of ominousness and fear when Tess agrees to spend a night in the house with a stranger. After all, even a brief appearance of Bill Skarsgard on screen can leave such an impression, given his previous roles. However, soon, we learn that the threat is much more dangerous and deeper than it originally seemed.

The Second Time Frame

During the day, Tess learns more about the neighborhood she rents a house in, finding many reasons to leave the place as soon as possible. Unfortunately, she was unsuccessful in her mission. Locking herself in the basement, Tess quickly discovers the house’s dark history. 

Beneath the house lies a hidden labyrinth of dark, narrow tunnels, concealing something monstrous and profoundly saddening. Moreover, this discovery holds the key to understanding the history of the entire neighborhood and its current decay.

With Keith and Tess following these tunnels, as any character in a horror movie would, they build piece by piece understanding of who lived there and what happened in this house of pain. 

We travel to the 1980s to witness the original house owner, Frank, and follow his crime steps. He used to stalk, kidnap, rape, and murder women in the area, trapping them in the tunnels for years. When those women gave birth to his children, he would keep girls where they repeated the fate of their mothers. That’s how the monster of the movie came to be. 

The tunnels were home for the Mother – an abomination who never lived in daylight. How this happened is another question, though, since the Mother is only one generation of an inbred. Maybe if writers rely on proper writing applications like from the list at visualmodo.com/handy-applications-that-assist-in-essay-writing, they wouldn’t have such inconsistencies in a plot.

When the new owner of the house, AJ, arrives, he finds the house empty but with a car in the driveway and someone’s belongings inside. He searches the house and soon finds the open door to the tunnels. 

Ending 

In contrast to typical horror movie endings, where the last person standing (Tess) typically defeats the monster, often in a violent act, this film takes a different approach. It spends a moment reminding the audience who the real monster is. It wasn’t a poor woman who knew nothing but aggression and perversion by her captor and father. The Mother only wanted to care for her child and receive love. 

Tess sees this in the woman’s eyes. It creates a moment of connection based on compassion and shared pain. Just like that, Tess’s decision to end the life of the Mother is an expression of empathy rather than revenge. It gives us a rather sad ending, where we feel saddened by the story, sympathy for the ‘monster,’ and outrage for the movie’s real villain.