Surprise: something spooky is going on with Bill Skarsgård in the Barbarian trailer

Georgina Campbell and Justin Long also star in the new horror thriller

Surprise: something spooky is going on with Bill Skarsgård in the Barbarian trailer
Bill Skarsgård in Barbarian Screenshot: 20th Century Fox/YouTube

A quick scroll through Bill Skarsgård’s IMDb will tell you that when he shows up on screen, more often than not, something freaky is about to go down. Unfortunately, Georgina Campbell’s character in Barbarian did not get this memo.

In the new trailer for the horror thriller, Tess (Campbell) arrives at her rental to find the place has been double booked. It’s also a dodgy neighborhood on a dark and stormy night (of course), so her fellow house guest Keith (Skarsgård) offers to crash on the couch while she sleeps on the bedroom, which, as he points out, has a lock.

Tess takes the strange man up on his offer, which is bad enough. But trusting that easily pick-able lock? Girl, at least put a chair under the doorknob or something! The door obviously comes open while she sleeps, leading to a super creepy chain of events that includes the discovery of a secret passage in the basement.

But there’s more to Barbarian than Tess wandering around the dungeon-like labyrinth with her phone flash light (although there’s plenty of that). An ominous voice over that sounds designed to brainwash promises that whatever’s happening is “perfectly natural,” and the image of a cheerful suburban yellow house confuses the issue even further. And is that Justin Long? (Yes, it is!)

BARBARIAN | Official Trailer | In Theaters August 31

There’s a fun case of Twin Film happening here: in Gone In The Night (previously titled The Cow), the trailer for which was released earlier this week, Winona Ryder also shows up at a remote abode that has been mysteriously double booked. She also has a sinister experience at the house, and there may similarly be something more than meets the eye going on there. If you’re the kind of person who wanted to see both No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits, you may want to check both out to see how closely these plots resemble each other.

 
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