10 Recent Horror Movie Fates Worse Than Death

What Barbarian loses in a confusion of plotlines and muddle of themes, it makes up for in creative scares and a deep and abiding horror that literally takes us beneath the idyllic sheen of suburbia.

Suspicions are high from the outset as two Airbnb-ers double-book the same property and wind up having to spend the night together in an otherwise abandoned neighbourhood. And it doesn't help that one of them is Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgård. However, the first night passes without incident and it isn't until the second that things unravel. The pair get stuck in the basement and discover several hidden areas, including a labyrinthine complex far underground.

This is the lair of the Mother (Matthew Patrick Davis), a filthy, naked, sub-human brute who stalks the passages during the day and comes up into the house at night, seeking victims to become her "children".

But before we sharpen the pitchforks, there's a whole lotta backstory that might explain her behaviour -- and her unavoidable predicament. Turns out, the Mother has been been forced to live underground, the product of an abusive rapist who kept women in the basement and bred from them and their children. She is the deformed mutant product of generations of incest, alienated from society and unable to fully understand things, least of all her own miserable situation.