A Rotten Tomatoes Horror Favorite Is Leaving Netflix Soon

Georgina Campbell stars as Tess in the 2022 horror film ‘Barbarian.’

Netflix

From a distance, Barbarian doesn’t seem like the kind of film that would spark endless Reddit threads, that would instantly become one of the highest-rated horror movies of the decade (it currently sports 92% on Rotten Tomatoes). The setup, ordinary on its surface, is ultimately deceptive: a woman arrives at her Airbnb, late at night in a rainstorm, only to discover another guest has booked the same room. Such an uneasy coincidence could be the start of any small-scale thriller, or perhaps even a rom-com with jagged edges. But Barbarian is not just another thriller, and it’s certainly not a romantic comedy. It is, as horror fans who’ve seen it can attest, a cinematic rollercoaster that keeps changing tracks until the closing moments.`

The genius of Zach Cregger’s debut film (he had co-directed films before, but Barbarian is his first solo feature) is that it weaponizes familiarity. The first half hour is built around the universal unease of entering a stranger’s home, especially for a woman traveling alone—a woman who just escaped a toxic relationship, no less. Tess (Georgina Campbell) weighs politeness against intuition as she considers whether to trust Keith (Bill Skarsgård), who has just as much claim to the house as she does (it’s all part of the movie’s commentary on different male archetypes and how they relate to women’s real-world experiences).

But then the film pivots. Without revealing the specifics—because, as fans on Reddit will attest, it’s best to go in blind—Barbarian plunges into its basement and into an entirely different mode of horror, revealing a whole new world you’d never expect. Suddenly the menace is no longer just the question of whether Keith can be trusted, but something far more shocking, grotesque, bizarre. The tonal whiplash you experience at that point, the sense that Barbarian can be genuinely terrifying one moment and weirdly funny the next, is what transformed the film into a cult hit. How Cregger, who would go on to direct the mega-horror-hit Weapons, milks the tension from there is astounding.

That “go in cold” ethos has become a kind of ritual. To recommend Barbarian is to invite someone into a club of people who had experienced its jolts firsthand. Fans began pairing it in lists with Hereditary, Malignant and The Witch; films that, like Barbarian, thrive on surprise, on defying audience expectations. By the time the craziest movie of 2022 hit streaming, Cregger’s first big movie already had a burnished reputation thanks to Reddit’s word-of-mouth marketing.

Barbarian didn’t just win over horror fans—critics fell hard too. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 92% score from more than 200 reviews, putting it in league with some of the most acclaimed horror films of recent memory. For context, Jordan Peele’s Get Out sits at 98%, Ari Aster’s Hereditary at 90%, and Robert Eggers’ The Witch at 91%. For a mid-budget horror flick from (at the time) a virtually unknown director? Those are astounding numbers.

Critics across the board praised its inventiveness. David Fear of Rolling Stone praises Cregger’s ability to “play the tension-and-release-and-oh-hey-here’s-even-more-tension game that characterize best-in-show creepfests.” Meanwhile, over at Indiewire, Jude Dry compares it to Get Out as a film that “mines multiple real-life scenarios and fears to unleash some truly unhinged terrors.” Finally, Frank Scheck at The Hollywood Reporter marveled at its audacity, claiming that “anyone willing to go along for the perverse ride will be thoroughly satisfied with this retro-feeling effort that superbly recalls the early works of Wes Craven.” That combination of highbrow admiration and crowd-pleasing shocks is a treasured feat in horror.

The plot sure is wild, but none of that would matter without such a stellar cast: Georgina Campbell plays Tess with subdued intelligence, always alert to danger but never reduced to cliché “final girl” beats; Bill Skarsgård’s very presence is a casting masterstroke, as audiences who know him as Pennywise bring baggage into every charming smile, making his Keith feel both trustworthy and suspicious; and then Justin Long crashes into the movie in one of his strangest roles, playing an arrogant Hollywood type whose storyline collides with Tess’s in unpredictable ways. Each performance makes you question where the movie is going and what it is saying—basically, you’re never a single step ahead of Cregger.

Looking back now, Barbarian feels like the proof of concept for the director’s even bigger 2025 hit, Weapons. With a budget of less than $5 million, that film shattered box office expectations with its (to date) $210 million worldwide pull. But the seeds for that juggernaut were planted here with Barbarian: the trust in surprise, the tonal balancing act, the audience’s willingness to walk in blind—it’s all part of the fun. The horror community’s championing of Barbarian created a culture that carried over to Weapons. In hindsight, this wasn’t just a breakout indie, but a warning shot that a major new cinematic voice had arrived.

The only real problem with Barbarian is that it’s about to disappear from Netflix. For subscribers, that makes now the perfect time to catch up on the horror film that had audiences shrieking, laughing and running to Reddit to compare notes. With a Rotten Tomatoes score this high, with performances this sharp, and with a reputation built on the thrill of not knowing, it’s the rare movie that feels like an event even three years after its release.