Film / Barbarian

Come for a night. Stay forever.

Barbarian is a 2022 horror thriller film written and directed by Zach Cregger (best known as a co-founding member of The Whitest Kids U' Know comedy troupe).

Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) arrives at 476 Barbary Street in Detroit for a filmmaking job opportunity, only to discover that her AirBnB is double-booked, presently occupied by the odd but seemingly good-natured Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgård).

The two strangers agree to cohabitate, and despite Tess's initial misgivings, all seems well... until she inadvertently discovers a hidden tunnel in the basement. A cursory investigation from Tess unveils a cell-like, bloodstained bedroom in the tunnel. When Keith decides to take a look for himself, the pair's stay in 476 Barbary takes an even more nightmarish turn...

The film was released on September 9, 2022 after a delay from August 31 of that year in the US with other selected territories (such as Mexico, Latin America and Australia) being released thereafter.

Previews: Trailer

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Barbarian contains examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Multiple examples revolving around Bill Skarsgård's character Keith.
  • At one point, Keith says, "Do I look like some kind of monster?" Skarsgård is best known for playing the monster clown Pennywise in 2017 and 2019.
  • Keith also acknowledges that he looks like a guy who breaks into houses. Skarsgård played such a character in his previous film Villains.
• Advertising by Association: "From a producer of It and the executive producer of The Grudge and The Ring."
• Alas, Poor Villain: Both Tess seemingly killing the Mother by ramming into her with her car and actually killing her by shooting her in the head at the end of the film are depicted as somber moments, since the Mother was ultimately another victim of Frank's barbaric actions, raised in horrid conditions such that she had no choice in becoming a feral, murderous monstrosity, and that it's a miracle she even grew up to be her own twisted version of a caring mother who tries to keep her "babies" fed and safe from Frank and the outside world.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: AJ comes home drunk after a night of clubbing, and leaves a voicemail to the co-star who accused him of rape trying to apologize (the exact thing his lawyer told him not to do).
• An Arm and a Leg: The Mother kills Andre by ripping his arm off and beating him to death with it.
• Artistic License – Biology: Inbreeding typically makes offspring more frail and less genetically stable, not superhuman, as the Mother is in several regards.
• Artistic License – Physics: Somehow, the Mother manages to throw herself off the water tower in pursuit of Tess and beat her to the ground to cushion her landing in spite of only falling a few stories. In reality, any extra speed the Mother might have gained by making herself more aerodynamic wouldn't have been nearly enough to cover that distance in a fall that short.
• Asshole Victim:
  • AJ is humiliated, terrorized, and ultimately torn apart by the Mother, and he frankly deserves every second of it.
  • Frank probably spent decades withering away in that dungeon before AJ finally gives him the opportunity to end himself. All things considered, he got off easy — and it's hinted that he only did so because AJ mentioned that cops would be swarming the place soon, and he didn't want to face the punishment.
• Atomic F-Bomb: AJ lets out a loud "FUCK!" when he pulls out Frank's gun at the top of the water tower, only to anxiously fumble it so hard that he drops it over the edge.
• Author Avatar: Keith is a lanky, awkward (but ultimately charming, funny, and well-intentioned) man who also happens to be a founding member of a famous troupe of artists. The obvious connection to make is that he's a stand-in for Barbarian's writer/director Zach Cregger, who first became known as a founding member of Whitest Kids U Know. Keith also explicitly specifies that he's not "the guy" of his troupe, which could be a reference to Cregger not being the "face" of his group, which many would identify as the late Trevor Moore.
• Backhanded Apology: The drunken apology that AJ leaves his costar via voicemail is not very good, to put it mildly.
  AJ: I’m guessing you probably don’t wanna talk to me, but I, um... I, I just want to say I'm really, really sorry if I did anything that night that might've, like, offended you, or... 'cause, you know, people can have different versions of the same thing, and I'm actually not even mad at you about it, and I hope you're not mad at me, 'cause I really...I really am sorry. And if you call me back, I’ll apologize to you again. So… please call me back, and I’ll apologize to you again.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Even though Keith turns out to be completely innocent, there are a number of hints that put him in a creepy light:
    • His driver's license photo has a strangely haunted expression.
    • He's clearly interested in Tess even though they're in a situation that is very inappropriate for romantic advances. When Tess gives him her name, he tells her it's "pretty". When she returns from the bedroom, he's presumptuously dimmed the lights and set out the wine in a clear attempt to create an impromptu date. After Tess indicates that she's going to go to bed, he stares at her expectantly for an awkwardly long time, obviously waiting for her to make a sexual advance on him, before giving up and leaving.
    • After they go to bed, Tess wakes up to find her bedroom door open and Keith having a nightmare.
    • He physically blocks her from fleeing the house after Tess tells him about the rape room and seems weirdly dismissive of her panic.
  • Frank takes out the gun and points it at AJ, but then turns it on himself instead.
  • Andre seems like an insane man trying to victimize Tess. It turns out that he's trying to save her from the psychos in the house.
• Berserk Button: The Mother has a few and reacts with extreme, murderous violence when she senses them: fear or distress from her captive "children," captives who try to escape, and people who put her "children" in harm's way.
• Big Bad: Contrary to what's implied in the trailer, Keith is not the threat in the house, but instead the feral Mother that dwells in the underground tunnels. Frank may be the reason the Mother exists, but he's too old and decrepit to be any threat to the protagonists and disposes of himself as soon as he's discovered.
• Bittersweet Ending: Tess is able to put the Mother down and escape the horrors of Barbary Street, but she is very obviously rattled from the events she's endured (having been trapped underground for two weeks, witnessing numerous people die, getting shot, and being thrown off the top of a water tower), not to mention the fact that she still has a long way to go to get back to civilization. The two most despicable people in the movie, Frank and AJ, both end up dead, but neither end up being held accountable for their crimes. Also, Keith and Andre, the two ultimately innocent men that Tess encountered, are brutally and unfairly killed by the Mother.
• Blaming the Victim: AJ vehemently denies his rape allegations, repeatedly claiming that his accuser is just out to ruin his reputation and career, even though he later says that he had to persistently convince her to sleep with him, strongly indicating a violation of consent did occur. He later slips back into this at the end of the film after Tess survives being thrown off the water tower by him, and he claims in his apology to her that he didn't actually let go of her and she slipped.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Mother wants to be, well, a mother, so she leaves the basement to kidnap people to be her children. Tess figures out the Mother's motive and manages to stay alive by appeasing her, but most of the other victims do not and die as a result.
• Bunker Woman: An especially horrifying example of the trope. Frank kept multiple women in the secret underbasement at various points, repeatedly raping them - and filming himself doing it - and then engaging in Parental Incest with the resulting offspring.
• Cat Scare: When Tess asks Keith to find his reservation confirmation on his phone while she uses the bathroom, she comes back out to find the living room empty...at which point Keith suddenly appears behind her with his phone, startling her.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Andre the homeless man, initially seen as a threat that may or may not be trying to attack Tess, is actually trying to warn her about the house. He's also the person AJ and Tess go to when they try to escape the Mother in the third act.
• Cliffhanger: The film's acts end on cliffhangers and then cut to different storylines, leaving the audience wondering how the previous story resolved. It's quite a while before we even see how the second storyline connects to the first.
• Creator Cameo: Zach Cregger makes an appearance as AJ's friend, who he meets at a club and drunkenly confesses his crimes to.
• Creepy Basement: Tess discovers a creepy, secret passage leading from the house's basement, leading to many horrors.
• Creepy Red Herring: When Tess returns to the house after her job interview, a disheveled man in a hoodie runs towards her while yelling at her. She, very understandably, panics and tries to get into the house as quickly as possible. Later in the movie, we learn that he was actually sincerely trying to warn her that the house is not safe.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Keith has his head repeatedly slammed against the wall of the tunnel by the Mother, turning it to bloody mush.
  • AJ has his eyes gouged out and his head cracked in half.
• Dead Star Walking: Bill Skarsgård is the most recognizable face in the cast, and his presence was featured quite heavily in the movie's promotional material. He doesn't make it out of the film's first act.
• Death by Irony: Andre, who doesn't even get to finish his spiel about how the Mother hasn't found his hiding place in fifteen years and isn't about to before he's violently slaughtered by her.
• Decoy Protagonist: Played with. When Tess attempts to save Keith, he gets killed by the Mother and she roars in Tess's face, at which point we Smash Cut to AJ in California, with the implication that Tess is dead. When AJ gets captured, he immediately runs into Tess who's relatively unharmed; Tess is ultimately the sole survivor of the affair.
• Dirty Coward: After some big talk about doing a good deed in helping Tess in spite of his past transgressions, AJ immediately leaves her behind when the Mother attacks and later tries to use her as bait to save his own skin.
• Double-Meaning Title:
  • The film's title can allude to two things: the address, 476 Barbary, which sounds like the inhabitant of that home would be a "Barbarian," but can also reference the multiple characters that commit acts of barbarism in the film. The Mother is a violent, feral deformity of a human being, and Frank is a serial rapist who kidnapped and imprisoned women in his dungeon while taping his violent rapes of them. AJ can also count to a lesser extent, given the heavy implications that he raped a coworker, as well as his generally selfish behavior throughout the movie.
  • It could actually have another meaning: the origin of the word "Barbarian" pertains to someone who is a foreigner. The Greeks use this since anyone that doesn't speak Greek is heard as mindless babbling (or "bar bar") by them. This manner of speaking is all the Mother is mentally capable of, and her lack of being able to communicate properly, as well as her circumstances as a foreigner/outcast from society, are largely relevant to the movie's overall themes.
  • In addition, "Barbarian" is written with the same letters found in "Airbnb".
• Dramatic Irony: The movie's theme about trust between women and men, and how characters interact in the various situations they find themselves in:
  • Tess approaches her initial meeting with Keith and much of their interactions with reasonable amounts of caution, but he's only really guilty of trying too hard and not heeding her fear about the basement.
  • From the moment he is introduced, AJ proves himself to be a profound asshole who's heavily implied to be a rapist himself, but being thrust with Tess into the nightmare of escaping the Mother allows him far more immediate trust than he even remotely deserves.
  • Frank in the flashback sequence gives off notably creepy vibes, but still manages to get women to trust him. When bluffing his way into a woman's house under the guise of being from a power company, he is wearing coveralls with the nametag "Carlos" and isn't even trying hard to maintain the premise, but it proves enough to allow him inside and discreetly unlock a window for his later return.
• Driven to Suicide: Frank, when AJ discovers him. It's implied that it was AJ's promise to bring the police that drove him to it, although since Frank seems to be completely nonverbal by this point, it's ultimately left ambiguous.
• Even Evil Has Standards: AJ is a despicable human being and an implied rapist himself, but...
  • Even he is disgusted by Frank's actions, specifically the sheer volume of video tapes he has lined up to watch and the disgusting nature of the content therein.
  • He also seems legitimately sorry after he accidentally shoots Tess, and even after throwing her off a water tower to save his own skin, he does still try and help her when he sees she survived the fall.
• Eye Scream: AJ gets his eyes gouged out by the Mother, who then rips his head in two.
• Family Portrait of Characterization: AJ's wealth manager drops him as a client with calm professionalism, but the family photos of his wife and daughters with him indicate strongly that he is absolutely disgusted by AJ's deeds and misogyny.
• Fan Disservice: The Mother is a barely-human product of generational incest that is always seen running around naked and also forces AJ to breastfeed off her.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Against Andre's advice to save herself, Tess goes back to the house to rescue AJ. She's rewarded by him accidentally shooting her and then intentionally throwing her off a water tower.
• Final Girl: Tess is the only person to survive.
• Flashback Effects: When the movie flashes back to Frank gathering supplies to kidnap another victim, it's presented in a different aspect ratio and shot on physical film, fitting the time period.
• Foil: AJ's implied rape of a co-star is contrasted when he meets serial rapist Frank, who is responsible for siring the Mother as well as being the root of all the suffering that she (and every other woman he captured) has both endured and subjected other people to. Considering AJ's Never My Fault attitude, meeting Frank forces him (and the audience) to confront just how much damage sexual abuse can cause the victims, with little blowback to the perpetrators if they're never caught.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Near the beginning, Tess gets into a light argument with Keith about how men and women respond to shady situations differently. Women feel the need to be very careful while men feel comfortable just blundering straight in. Indeed, Tess approaches both the AirBnB double-booking and the secret basement with extreme caution. When she tells Keith about it in terror, he doesn't take her fully seriously and goes to see the basement for himself rather than leave with her despite her protests. This leads to his death. On top of that, when AJ arrives at the house, he shows no concern for how run-down the neighborhood is, is more annoyed than concerned about the house showing signs that someone had lived there, and when he finds the secret basement, rather than want to get out like Tess did, he's more concerned about measuring it to increase the sale value of the house, which causes him to carelessly put himself in danger. Even Andre, who claims to be doing everything he does to stay safe from the Mother, doesn't seem to actually reinforce his hideout to ensure the Mother can't get in, simply assuming that he'll be safe.
  • Tess and Keith also discuss in their conversation that the area their AirBnB is in is on the outskirts of the city where no one visits or wants to live, along with several other indications in dialogue throughout the first half of the film that indicate the area is considered low-value land. This neglect of the area is the exact quality that made the property attractive to Frank when he was building his dungeon, and also why no one has discovered what's happened in that house since.
  • At one point in the same conversation, Tess observes that it's always the girls that get their hearts ripped out, to which Keith counters with "Girls can rip. Trust me." Tess sees that for herself at the end when Mother literally rips AJ's head apart.
    • During the same conversation, Keith tells Tess that "There's always gonna be people that project some kind of dynamic onto us that serves them" - which is one of the movie's central themes.
  • AJ fumbles and drops the kitchen knife from nerves when he tries to draw it from his waistband. Later, he drops the gun in the exact same manner.
  • When we first see AJ, he's singing along to Donovan's "Riki Tiki Tavi." The lyrics are about how you have to "kill the snakes" yourself without the help of official institutions. Later in the film, Tess will have to rescue AJ and ultimately kill the Mother herself without the help of the police.
  • Likewise, our introduction to Frank features "Heat of the Moment" by Asia, a Break-Up Song that contains the lyric "I never meant to be so bad to you", which ties into one of the movie's big themes: men are often insensitive and hurtful to women without entirely realizing what they're doing - but that's no excuse.
  • One piece of graffiti on a dilapidated house in the neighborhood reads "DEATH FROM BELOW".
• Genre Blindness: A.J. discovers that there is a secret door in the basement of one of his rental properties opening into a dark tunnel. His immediate response? Do an internet search on "underground dwelling places" where he discovers that the square footage of such places can be listed as part of his property. He then goes into the tunnel with a measuring tape to find out just how more desirable he can make his property. Only when he is deep within the basement does he start to realize that he might be in danger.
• Genre Shift: The movie starts out in Psychological Horror territory, with Tess suspecting that her surprise roommate Keith has an ulterior motive. It then becomes a monster movie after the Mother appears and kills Keith. After that reveal, the film quickly cuts away to AJ singing in a car, and the movie gains some unexpected comedic elements. Once AJ arrives at the AirBnB, enters the basement and meets The Mother, it shifts mostly back to horror with some retained levity from AJ’s bumbling tendencies and the numerous truly surreal twists the story takes. By the third act, thriller-type action is also factored in.
• The Ghost: Megan, AJ's co-worker who accuses him of raping her. She is never seen, and the only time her voice is heard is her answering machine when AJ calls her.
• Ghost Butler: The door in the AirBnB leading to the basement slowly closes and locks on its own without explanation several times on Tess. The first time it happens, leaving her stuck downstairs, is what leads her to discover the hidden corridor.
• Hate Sink:
  • AJ is an obnoxious, irresponsible, and selfish manchild who is pathologically incapable of taking responsibility for any of the many horrible things he has done and proves time and time again that he cannot think in any terms beyond "How does this affect me?" Every single time there seems to be some faint glimmer of hope for a Heel Realization, he quickly throws it right out the window by proving yet again that self-interest is his sole priority.
  • Frank, the original owner of the house, is even worse. He kidnaps and rapes multiple women and saves tapes to further indulge in his atrocities. He even rapes his own daughters, resulting in the birth of the Mother who is deathly afraid of him. Even AJ (a potential rapist himself) is disgusted by him.
• Heel Realization: AJ seems to have one midway through the film (see Ignored Epiphany below). It doesn't last.
• Homage: The flashback sequence following Frank is one to Angst, down to replicating the film's alienating cinematography.
• Horrifying the Horror: Frank still terrifies the Mother with his abuse despite being a decrepit old man whom she could easily tear apart.
• In Vino Veritas: AJ gets shitfaced and leaves a drunken voicemail for the co-star accusing him of rape (against his attorney's directions) where he doesn't outright say he raped her, but it's painfully clear that he's admitting to it while trying to word it in a way that diminishes his own responsibility.
• Ignored Epiphany: After accidentally shooting Tess and escaping the basement, AJ seems to undergo a Jerkass Realization about how his actions affect others, with him noting that even if he didn't intend to hurt Tess (or his co-star), he still did and still needs to face the consequences for his actions. Unfortunately, he immediately falls back into his self-centered tendencies once the Mother reappears, as he barely thinks to wait up for the mortally wounded Tess, let alone help her escape, and eventually throws her off a water tower to distract the Mother and save his own skin.
• Inbred and Evil: The Mother, although ultimately the movie makes it clear that she is also a victim.
• Incompetence, Inc.: The property management company that handles the house for AJ does an incredibly bad job of it. They don't compare reservations placed through different platforms, resulting in the double-booking. They didn't inspect the house or notice the tunnel in the basement. They apparently don't pay attention to the utility bills, since there are multiple rooms in the underground dungeon drawing power from the house when nobody should be in residence. Lastly, they don't confirm that the renter has left or do any cleaning until the next renter is about to arrive.
• Jerkass Realization: AJ seems to have one while talking about accidentally shooting Tess (and, subtextually, about the rape he committed). It doesn't last.
  "I don't know if I'm a bad person. But I might be. I might be a bad person. Or maybe I'm... I'm a good person who just did a bad thing. I can't... I can't change what I've done. I can just try and fix it. And that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna fix it."
• Jump Scare:
  • A terrified Keith rapidly crawling towards Tess in the tunnel is a big one that's almost immediately outdone by the Mother bursting out of the shadows, roaring and bashing Keith’s head in. The most effective part of the latter scare is that up until then, the film showed pretty much zero signs that The Mother even existed at all, with the only hint being a sound Tess hears when she sees her bedroom door was opened, something one could easily assume to be Keith stalking her. This makes her sudden reveal utterly terrifying.
  • When AJ finds a hidden room in the tunnels, the camera moves slowly until a blurry thing in the background coughs, revealing it to be Frank, the maintenance worker.
• Karmic Death: AJ, for all his talk about wanting to become a better person after he accidentally shoots Tess, ultimately proves himself a self-centered coward when he tries using her as bait by throwing her off a water tower for the Mother to jump after. Rather than simply taking his gun to shoot Mother when he climbs down, he instead spends the time vainly attempting to justify his actions to Tess, giving the Mother plenty of time to kill him.
• Killed Offscreen: We see Frank stalk an attractive young woman in a yellow dress and then con his way into her home to leave a window unlocked. Many years later, AJ finds her yellow dress in his underground bunker amongst his murder trophies, confirming that she did become one of his victims.
• Lean and Mean:
  • The Mother is unnaturally tall and wiry, but no less strong for it.
  • Also applies to Frank, serial rapist and reason for everyone's misery, who's played by the tall and spare Richard Brake.
• Made of Iron:
  • The Mother survives getting rammed into a house by a car. She then survives jumping off a water tower to catch Tess and is strong enough afterward to crush AJ's head between her hands. It takes a bullet to the head to finally put her down.
  • Tess herself goes through a lot of punishment. She gets shot around the stomach and then survives being thrown off a water tower (with the Mother cushioning her fall), and she still manages to walk away during the ending.
• Mama Bear: Essentially why the Mother kills people. She's incredibly protective of people who stumble into her tunnels, thinking of them as her children, and is willing to go to any length to keep them safe from other people and to keep them from escaping.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Frank is a repugnant serial rapist and murderer with dozens of victims to his name. Even years later, the Mother is terrified of him, and Andre considers him to be worse than her. When AJ actually encounters him, he's a decrepit, bedridden wretch incapable of even speaking, and it's implied he's been like this for years. The terror he inspired in his daughter persists regardless.
• Manchild: AJ is at least in his mid-thirties, if not older (his actor was 44 when the film was made), but still acts like a douchebag frat bro from the 2000s and is completely incapable of sincerely taking responsibility for anything he does, trying to live life like one giant party.
• Match Cut: There's one such cut between the washing machine in 476 Barbary running and an overhead shot of a cup of tea Keith makes Tess, and another between Tess sleeping in bed at night and winding up in another position come morning.
• Meaningful Name: Frank, as in Brutal Honesty. AJ refuses to think of himself as a rapist, if only because he's too self-centered to even consider that what he was doing was painful for his victim. Frank, by contrast, makes no bones about what he is, least of all to himself.
• Meet Cute: Keith seems to be trying to turn the awkward double-booking situation into one of these with Tess, not really taking seriously how genuinely frightening the whole experience is for her.
• Mercy Kill: The Mother lived quite a hellish upbringing and a horrific life under the watch of Frank. When Tess points a gun at her head, she seems to gladly accept it to end the pain.
• Metaphorically True: When Tess escapes the house 2/3rds of the way in with Andre's help, Andre warns her not to go back for AJ as the Mother isn't the worst thing living in the basement. In a sense, that is true, since Frank is also living under the house. From the sense of being an active danger to Tess, however, Frank falls short, as he's a decrepit, elderly man who shoots himself the first chance he gets (either from AJ's threat of calling the police or to escape living in the basement under the Mother's watch).
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: Our first introduction to Frank. In addition to the Flashback Effects listed above, we are also shown the neighbourhood in much better repair, Asia's "Heat of the Moment" is playing, Frank's car is clearly an older model, and to really make it 100% clear, there's a news story about the Reagan administration on the radio. All of this saves the need for on-screen text informing us that this scene is a flashback set in the '80s.
• Mood Whiplash: The first half of the film comes to a violent head with the Mother repeatedly and brutally slamming Keith's head into the basement wall until it's nothing but paste while all Tess can do is watch. Smash Cut to black, and...we start following AJ in his convertible in LA singing along to Donovan. The tone becomes almost comical (aside from the fact that AJ is a scumbag who almost definitely raped his co-star) right until he comes across the Mother in the basement himself.
  • Right after that first Mood Whiplash, it whiplashes again as [[spoiler:AJ's happy mood is obliterated by the news that he's being accused of rape.
• The Morlocks: The Mother has become something like this, a feral and degraded product of inbreeding who seems terrified of bright light and lives underground.
• Mr. Exposition: Andre. He explains to Jess who and what The Mother really is and the full extent of Frank’s atrocities.
• Never My Fault: AJ absolutely cannot take responsibility for his actions and reliably reacts with either indignation at the idea of being accused of something that he has not admitted to, or rationalization of his role in the situation and how, at worst, he was only human and is now the real victim. The one time he seems to be willing to accept fault for something, it's for accidentally shooting Tess, which is an honest mistake given the circumstances, and it's without a hint of irony regarding his steadfast denial of the rape allegations against him.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The trailer implies a more compressed time frame for the movie, implying that everything happens over the course of one night, particularly when the trailer shows Tess hearing footsteps quickly moving away from her door after it's opened. In the movie proper, all she does at that moment is check on Keith, who is having nightmares, before going back to bed and successfully sleeping through to the morning. It's not until the next day (not even night) that she goes into the basement and the plot gets rolling in earnest.
  • The trailer makes it seem like the horrors found in the tunnels are part of an "SCP-like" government conspiracy, as Tess appears to be forced to watch a messed-up instructional video. In the actual film, however, the dungeon has nothing to do with the government and was instead simply built as a way for Frank to store his many victims and inbred children, and the video is nothing more than an instructional video about breastfeeding found in The Mother's room.
    • Going with this angle, the trailer also implies that Tess and Keith's double-booking was no accident, and that they were being manipulated by the government to intentionally trap them both in the AirBnB. But in the film, it's a legitimate accident.
• Nice Guy: Keith gets killed via refusing to heed Tess's warnings, but by-and-large comes off as perfectly good-natured, albeit trying too hard in an awkward situation.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Mother is a downplayed villain, as she's clearly a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. She does a lot of the murdering, killing sympathetic characters Keith and Andre, but she also saves Tess's life by cushioning her fall when AJ pushes her off the water tower, and gives AJ a much-deserved Karmic Death. In her final moments, she even seems to be saying goodbye to Tess.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • When she's in the clear, Tess still goes back for AJ. He repays her by accidentally shooting her and later purposely throwing her off a water tower to save himself.
  • Partway through the movie, a local homeless man helps Tess escape the Mother during the day and later that night brings her and AJ into his nighttime hiding place. He gets beaten to death with his own arm for his trouble.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • Essentially what makes the first act of the movie terrifying. There is clearly something off about the AirBnB, and Tess and by extension the audience can’t quite put their finger on it. This aspect is best shown once Tess finds the hidden area behind the door, and it's complete darkness. Even once she checks it out and stumbles upon the hidden room, all she finds inside it is an abandoned camera, a filthy mattress, and a bloody handprint on the wall, leaving whatever terrible things that happened in the room up to one’s imagination.
  • We never see what's on the "GAS STATION REDHEAD" VHS tape (at most, we hear a few seconds of a woman screaming and violent noises), but judging from AJ's reaction and the villain's backstory, we can guess that what's on it is truly horrific.
• "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: After AJ is accused of rape by his co-star, he goes out to a bar with a friend and tells him the seeming truth about what happened: he did have sex with the co-star, but her consent was not a constant variable. In his words, she "took some convincing", and resisted at first but eventually "came around" and "was down" for it, which he credits to being a "persistent dude".
• Obliviously Evil: AJ seems legitimately blindsided about the accusations against him, and it's clear that in his mind that he did nothing wrong.
• Parental Incest: The Mother is the product of this. Worse, it's implied that it may be several generations' worth, with the same father (Frank) and several generations of mothers, all sired by him. The fact that she's referred to as "The Mother" implies that she has been forced to participate in this herself at some point, though if so, her offspring are surely long dead by the time the movie starts.
• Police Are Useless: The cops that Tess calls for help think she’s a drug addict that tried to break into the house, and they abandon her before she can prove to them that AJ is still trapped in there. This is foreshadowed in the Donovan song "Riki Tiki Tavi," in which the singer talks about having to "kill the snakes" yourself without the help of official institutions.
• Pushed at the Monster: AJ pushes Tess at the Mother — by pushing her off the water tower, providing an ample distraction for AJ to get down and escape. He clearly hoped for either the fall or the Mother to kill her, but the Mother actually saves Tess's life in that moment, as she's come to view her as her "baby".
• Red Herring:
  • The audience is meant to assume that Keith is the film’s villain due to his pushy behavior and how he’s staying at the house Tess rented (not to mention being played by an actor primarily known for villainous roles). It turns out that his niceness and the scheduling snafu are both genuine.
  • In Andre's first appearance, he chases Tess while screaming at her, which understandably freaks her out. Turns out he was trying to warn her about the monster in the house.
• Romantic False Lead: Once the initial awkwardness is over and it's clear Keith is not a creep/stalker/murderer, Tess starts to reciprocate his interest... then the Mother bashes his head in.
• Scenery Dissonance: The flashback shows Barbary Street to have been quite a bright, colorful suburban area in the '80s, heavily contrasting the act of Frank posing as a maintenance worker to unlock innocent women's windows to kidnap and rape them in his dungeon.
• Scenery Gorn: Barbary Street is a nearly deserted hellhole in the middle of one of Detroit's worst neighborhoods, with almost all the houses completely abandoned and in such a state of disrepair that it looks like a hurricane swept through the area.
• Secret Squatter: The Mother and Frank — if not the other women that Frank kidnapped and raped — have been living in the basement of AJ's house, unbeknownst to him or, it seems, most of the people who rent it out. Zigzagged in that it was Frank's house first.
• Shadow Archetype: Frank for AJ, and both AJ and Frank for Keith. Keith is a Dogged Nice Guy, though he does border on Wants a Prize for Basic Decency with his behavior towards Tess. AJ is a self-centered douchebag who raped a co-worker; though he's in denial and lies to himself that the hookup was consensual, he does eventually show some trace of remorse for his horrible behavior. Then there's Frank, who is an apparently unrepentant serial rapist and possibly a Serial Killer who has imprisoned and raped multiple women, including his own children.
• Shout-Out:
  • Tess has a copy of Jane Eyre, the Trope Namer for Madwoman in the Attic. The villain turns out to be a mad woman in the basement.
  • Frank wears a boiler suit and has slicked-back hair that makes him resemble Michael Myers.
  • AJ compares himself to "Eye of the Tiger" when describing his tenacity in coercing his co-star into having sex with him.
  • The Mother gouging AJ's eyes out before bursting his head open is similar to Ash pushing his thumbs in the last remaining Deadite's eyeballs in the first Evil Dead film.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: The trailers hide the existence of AJ, with any shots of him being short enough that you could confuse him with Keith, who is more prominently advertised.
• Skewed Priorities: When AJ discovers the secret Creepy Basement, we hard cut to him excitedly Googling whether he can claim the extra square footage as living space. He then blithely wanders through the dank corridors and into the rape room to take measurements.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: After an immensely disturbing story of serial rape, murder, torture, and multiple gory deaths, The Ronettes' upbeat "Be My Baby" plays over the end credits.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: When Tess finds Keith in the dungeon, the Mother comes out of the darkness and beats Keith's head against the wall, killing him.
• Tempting Fate: Andre confidently tells Tess and AJ that The Mother hasn’t been able to find him in 15 years. Guess who pops up just as he's saying this?
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Frank, at least when he was young, looks like your average Joe of a maintenance worker. This is in spite of the fact that he is a kidnapping, incestuous serial rapist.
• Too Dumb to Live: When AJ finds the extremely shady room featuring a dirty bed, sewage bucket, bloody handprint, and video camera, unlike Tess, whose first reaction is to get the hell out of Dodge, his first reaction is to measure the room to see if he can increase the value of the house. When he finds the second hidden door leading even further down, he just continues to measure without a single concern for his own safety.
• Tragic Villain: The Mother is a hideous product of incest that treats her victims like her children because she desires motherhood. When Tess puts Frank's gun to her head, even she looks a bit remorseful before she pulls the trigger to kill her. The Mother also places a kiss on her forehead and makes a noise that sounds a bit like "bye-bye", suggesting that she might understand what Tess is doing and why it's necessary.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • The AirBnB and HomeAway people who ended up double-booking the same house to two people, setting the plot in motion.
  • Even after that, everything might have turned out okay if Tess hadn't gone looking in the basement for toilet paper. "Might" is the key word here, since we later learn that the Mother comes out of the dungeon to roam the street at night.
• Villainous Incest: Frank sexually assaulted women he kidnapped, then did the same to the children born of said assaults, eventually leading to the birth of the Mother.
• Villainous Legacy: The Mother is a product of Frank's horrific abuse, but Frank himself is too old and decrepit by this point to be considered a direct threat.
• Villainous Rescue: The Mother is genuinely protective of her female "children", so that's why she saved Tess's life from the latter falling from the Water Tower thrown by AJ.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: AJ is seen vomiting into a toilet after a night of drinking, his head being mostly submerged in the bowl.
• Walking Spoiler: To discuss either of the people living in the basement obviously requires giving away the movie.
• Wham Shot: The Mother's first sudden appearance running up behind Keith, giving the first reveal of the true horrors inside the house.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Who opened the bedroom door while Tess was sleeping that first night? Was Keith watching her? Or did the Mother sneak up out of the basement? There's a case to be made for either possibility.
• The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Andre has been living in the neighborhood for 15 years and knows everything about the dangers of the Barbary house. Just as he's trumpeting how safe he is from the Mother, she bursts in and kills him, leaving our two less experienced protagonists to themselves.