10 More Horror Movies That Lied About Their Premise
1. Barbarian Brilliantly Misled Us All
Playing magnificently off his chilling turn as Pennywise in Andy Muschietti's IT movies, Barbarian brilliantly suggested that Bill Skarsgard was to be the threat of last year's film.
As the feature starts off - and as the trailers detail - Georgina Campbell's Tess arrives at a rental property she's booked in a rough area of Detroit. Upon getting to the house, stranger Keith (Skarsgard) is already there and claims he's also booked the property for the next few days.
Given how audiences have been somewhat conditioned to view Skarsgard in a creepy, suspicious light, you immediately think that Keith's up to no good when - after Tess agrees to stay the night as Keith offers to sleep on the sofa - Tess' bedroom door eerily opens in the wee hours. All very atmosphere-setting, all very disturbing, all very much positioning Keith as a questionable figure who clearly has underhand intentions.
When Tess later finds a hidden corridor and an underground room with bloodstains in it, again that only furthers the idea of Keith being a wrong 'un. That is, until Keith himself investigates this corridor... where he's brutally murdered be a deformed figure known only as Mother.
With that, Barbarian pivots its story to introduce Justin Long's AJ, the owner of this rental house, as he and Tess find themselves in the cutches of Mother and her unique habits.