Alli Hill

As a long time horror enthusiast, I have found the that over the last ten years, the quality of the horror genre has gone downhill at an alarming rate. Barbarian was such a breath of fresh air and really scratched the itch for me. A beautiful balance of tension and mystery, a refreshing lack of traditional jump scares, and a delightfully unique antagonist, Barbarian really hits all the most important marks. It seems that most of the negative reviews of this film criticize the lack of logic of the characters. I always argue that all good horrors have to have at least a little corn. Realistically, the characters did make some goofy decisions but had they not, we wouldn’t have gotten to see what was lurking below, so I appreciate their arguably unwise decisions. The “monster” of the film was a true delight and managed to be cringey and terrifying, while still being unique in that it didn’t fit a classic creature feature, zombie, or any of the more traditional horror characters. Four stars didn’t seem quite fair to rate this one so I rounded up to 5 but I would really call it a 9/10.

Spoilers! It makes me sad to see so many poor reviews of this movie. It’s always been an absolute gem for me. Firstly, what I most cherish in this movie is the incredible group of uniquely frightening characters, most notably Dr. Satan and his experimental creatures. This followed by the stellar acting jobs delivered by Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie. They play the perfect murderous hillbilly fanatics. One quality that I also appreciate in this movie is its plausibility. While it’s not really something that would likely happen, the events are all somewhat plausible but still with a bit of magic at the end when we actually get to meet the legendary Dr. Satan and all of his zombie like creations. I enjoy the thrill of what’s possible with a dash of creature feature/horrific characters. This is a heavily stylized movie but I personally really appreciate the style.

Meteor Garden pales in comparison to Boys Over Flowers. Shancai is incredibly annoying, far more so than Geum Jan Di (if you can believe it or not) But Dylan Wang saves the show, just in the same way Lee Min Ho does in BOF. We will always wonder what these gorgeous boys see in these obnoxious homely girls who have no acting talent. Wouldn’t recommend.