The worst kind of schlock is pretentious high-concept schlock.

This is another case of an over-hyped flick apparently praised more for its themes than for what it eventually amounts to, suggesting the famous Roger Ebert quote that it's less important what a film is about and more weight should be given to *how* it is about something. This one goes about conveying a reasonable message (although even in terms of themes and messages, this is still a vague and inconsistent mess) in only the most clumsy ways possible.

Barbarian has got it all - including a number of one-dimensional stereotype characters constantly talking to themselves because the writer/director doesn't know how to convey emotion or motivation without having its characters babbling constantly. All hat blabbing then amounts to tons of demented, cringe-worthy and mostly superfluous dialoge, at one point leading to a percieved five minutes of pointless discussion about whether or not there's a certain thing in the cellar and whether to go there or not. Urgh...

The overall psychological plasusibility of the protagonists is equally absurd with characters' emotional states changing out of the blue at any moment without any reasonable trigger. There's a full 70's giallo level of awkwardness on display here in what some space alien (or even worse: Michael Bay or M. Night Shyamalan) might assume to be plausible human behavior. Add to that some serious overacting and an abundance of "idiot plot" points in a storyline built around a forced metaphor to the point of nothing else making any fucking sense...

As a result you get a plainly laughable movie that's not even bold enough to get properly ridiculous while also constantly struggling at establishing a consistent tone. And just when you thought the whole thing couldn't get any more demented, a newly introduced character cranks up the douchebag factor to eleven in a way that (finally!!) could almost be understood as an attempt at proper satire but to be honest, this strikes me as pure luck rather than intention.

All that said, the movie's payoff kinda manages to punch above its weight. As intense and effective (and still mind-bogglingly stupid) as these final 20 minutes may be though, i just can't ignore the whole bumbling first half i had to endure to get there.