Is Barbarian Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

A bedroom door that opens by itself

The night before her job interview, Tess Marshall arrives at a rental house in Brightmoor, Detroit, and finds that a man named Keith is already there because of a double booking. She warms to him and stays while he takes the couch. In the night she wakes to find her bedroom door open, and Keith says he didn't open it. The next day, her interviewer warns her about the neighborhood, and a homeless stranger runs up to tell her to leave. She locks herself in the basement by accident and finds a hidden room holding a camera, a mattress with stains, a bucket and a bloody handprint. Keith frees her, then ignores her warning and goes into the room. This is the scene to brace for, and it happens early. When he doesn't come back, Tess follows him down a tunnel and finds him injured. A naked, deformed woman bashes Keith's skull against a wall and kills him.

Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.

A man with legal fees and a measuring tape

The house belongs to AJ, a Hollywood actor who has just been fired from a television series after allegations of rape. He is out of the film community and short on money for lawyers, so he travels to Detroit to look at the house before selling it. He finds the hidden tunnel and decides to measure it, thinking that extra space could raise the price. The deformed woman goes after him, and he tumbles into a pit and finds Tess already in it.

Frank's other basement

A flashback to 1982 shows Frank, the house's first owner, buying supplies for a home birth and following a woman. In the present, Tess and AJ are trapped in the pit. The woman tries to feed AJ from a bottle of milk, and Tess works out that the woman wants them to play her babies. If AJ won't, the woman pulls him off and forcibly nurses him. Tess gets out with help from Andre, the homeless man from earlier, who tells her the woman will be hunting her once night falls. While the woman is distracted, AJ finds a room she won't go near. Inside he meets Frank, who is bedridden, and finds videotapes of Frank abducting and assaulting women. Frank shoots himself with a revolver he had hidden.

Please do not shoot the rescuer

The police don't believe Tess and assume she is drunk. She breaks back into the house, gets her car keys, and hits the woman with her car on the way out. Then she goes back down to rescue AJ, and AJ shoots her by mistake with Frank's revolver. Outside, the woman's body is gone. Tess and AJ take shelter with Andre, who explains what the woman is. She is the product of Frank's incest across several generations, with daughters he had with the women he abducted.

A water tower and a poor decision

The woman breaks into Andre's place, kills him, and chases the two of them up a water tower. AJ drops his gun, and to save himself he pushes Tess off the tower. The woman jumps after her and cushions her fall. AJ finds Tess alive and starts explaining himself, but the woman wakes up and splits his head open. She then tries to comfort Tess, who shoots her with Frank's gun and leaves.