Barbarian is the least scary most thought-provoking horror gem you’ll see this year. Writer-director Zach Cregger’s tour-de-huh? is one to see with a big audience knowing as little as possible. So if you find this review scarce on details, know it’s for your own good.

Barbarian opens in well-trod horror territory. A young woman, alone in the middle of the night, caught in a storm, finds herself stuck in a situation that she would normally flee. It’s fun and it leads the seasoned horror viewer to a set of expectations. Shortly thereafter, Barbarian meets and promptly destroys those expectations.

You’ll see some familiar faces here, but mostly what you’ll see is a dedicated study in “what if.” Moreso than most genre pictures, Barbarian chases down the ends of its means. It seems Cregger was unwilling to put a single element of the macabre or the gruesome on screen without first applying the lens of a journalist or investigator and asking why and what then until his ideas were rung out. Make no mistake, this is a very good thing.

Barbarian is deeply thoughtful and clever, but not in a way that grates. It is also exhilarating and silly and gross and audacious, but not in the ways you might expect. For this reviewer, at least, it offered no scares. Still, Barbarian haunts in its own way. Hanging in the mind and gnawing at the thoughts, long after it spills its secrets.

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Barbarian
Director: Zach Cregger
Writer: Zach Cregger
Rating: R
Runtime: 1h 42mins
Release Date: September 9, 2022

George Miller’s choices in Three Thousand Years of Longing will shock you. Although he has a millennia-old Djinn (Idris Elba) and a narratologist brought to life by no less a character champion than Tilda Swinton, he plays this love story linear and straight. It’s the thinking person’s spin on the classic “genie in a bottle” lore. You see, Alithea knows enough about stories to know that all stories about wishes are cautionary tales. Djinn has lived every one of those cautions. And therein lies the proverbial rub — is it possible to outwit the tricks of fate? Can Djinn avoid the pitfalls of his heart? Can Alithea find it in herself to follow her heart?

It transpires that these two lauded performers find a lot of emotional mileage in this structure. The lovelorn eternal and the heartbroken mortal frame their unlikely tale, which might have been totally forgettable. But is ultimately lifted by the players and the trappings. The sound design, even in simple scenes is noticeably sharp and playful. And, it should come as no surprise, the actual visuals of the film are entirely transporting. Various chapters from Djinn’s past are brought to luscious life. The food, the skies, the women — they all look at once too beautiful to be possible and to reminiscent of a memory to be impossible.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is not the wild trip through George Miller’s wild mind that the trailers promised. But it is a long, strange trip. And perhaps a more entertaining one than it deserves to be. The ends are always evident, the nods to writerly delight and scholarly discourse border on indulgent. It seems so much more could have been explored. And yet, the film does create a sense of …longing. Desire to once again experience the agony and the ecstasy of doomed love. A thirst to taste the unknown. A desire to collect obscure knickknacks from faraway lands. And, as Alithea would remind us, what are stories for if not to remind us of the glories and gulches of life? We cannot argue with her there.

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Three Thousand Years of Longing

• Director: George Miller
• Writer: George Miller, Augusta Gore, & A.S. Bryant (based upon the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by)
• Rating: R
• Runtime: 1h 48mins
• Release Date: August 26, 2022