Ok, Barbarian is a woke nightmare pile of trash. It's not scary and not funny, and is very preachy, ultimately not remotely interesting. This will be a non-standard rebuild as I'm not actually proposing changes. There is no fixing this movie. There is fixing the intention behind it though.
This movie follows multiple characters, all others are rather pointless for our discussion as they have no greater meaning and are merely filler:
Face Value, descending order of screentime:
Tess: a girl with no personality other than "Has Job Interview" and "Radical Feminist scared of anyone who possesses a penis."
Keith: Well meaning, if boring, normal guy. Apparently watched a movie once and nonsensically owns a company/is rich and therefore is a romantic prospect, but is staying at the worst airbnb imaginable because the plot is bad. Also has night terrors. Also sort of a red herring because the actor plays the new Pennywise.
AJ: Actor dudebro who probably raped a girl and owns the worst airbnb imaginable.
Frank: Serial killer and rapist that wanted to start a family/incest ring in the 1980s.
Andre: This is a recurring horror movie character trope I call Transient Bill, who as far as I can tell originally makes an appearance in Return of the Living Dead 3. It's a homeless guy, usually black, that knows everything that's going on and can't or won't do anything about it. Always fated to die in spite of knowing everything. This variant of Transient Bill actually cares about helping people (well, Tess), but not enough to knock on a door slammed in his face and explain himself.
The Mother: Product of multiple levels of inbreeding via rape, somehow makes her a superhuman (strong, durable, can teleport) who wants to be a mommy or kill everyone, as the plot demands.
The Police: Two Detroit cops who ain't got time for this lady's bullshit and don't care about what's going on in crackhouse central, a suburb of Detroit.
This is honestly all the characterization we ever get. All of these characters are one-dimensional and it really only makes sense that the police (well, and Transcient Bill) would be as we spend a lot of time with all the other characters. None of them seem to have personalities outside of the present moment other than Keith at one point having seen an obscure documentary. That's literally the entirety of anyone's character development and it goes to the actor with the highest paycheck and lowest screentime (well, of the stars).
Allegory: This is what the director wants you to think of all these characters and of this tale in general. I put this here because I don't want to be rebutted as not having "got" the movie. I completely got the movie. It was shitty regardless:
Tess: The everywoman who is so relatable.
Keith: The man who puts up a front of being a feminist ally but is ultimately evil and must be killed because he is a subset of the group known as all men. Specifically when he doesn't immediately "believe women" and wants to see something for himself like a free thinking human would. Would have been saved by Tess if he was only smart enough to not think for himself and let her do all the thinking for him forever.
AJ: One of the "real monsters" of the film, psychopathically toxic male who doesn't realize he raped a woman and that his airbnb is obviously a murder house complete with rape rooms. Will not take his feminist medicine/drink The Mother's milk and therefore deserves to die. Would be saved by Tess if he listened to her and didn't instinctually always harm her or put her in harms way because he's a monster who does that because toxic masculinity.
Frank: Basically what AJ would eventually become, a completely remorseless serial killer, rapist, and perpetrator of incest who is "the real killer" behind any and all the Mother's actions. Essentially all of The Mother's actions should be blamed on Frank and not The Mother because inbred/taught wrong/mentally stunted/etc etc. He only really exists to foreshadow that AJ is going to "kill himself" though his actions against women. It's complete nonsense in this allegory that The Mother would allow Frank to live, let alone feed him and take care of him.
Andre: Reluctant father figure, but men can't be right so he is unable to protect Tess because that's not what father figures do, they merely scare or make a woman vulnerable in the guise of protecting them. Real women don't need no man no sir no how.
The Mother: A force of nature dealing out justice via pure unadulterated feminism. Tess literally has nothing to fear from The Mother. At one point she hits The Mother with a fucking car and pins her to a house and The Mother doesn't take offense to this and want to murder Tess because of course she wouldn't; vaginas gotta stick together. The Mother even lets Tess blow her head off while they are sitting vagina-to-vagina because girl power. Nonsense because if the message is "women trust women" the outcome of The Mother getting her head blown off by Tess is "see what that got ya?"
The Police: Police are evil, don't listen to women, don't believe women, even when there is evidence they should and a reason to check things out they don't. Blue lives don't matter. I'm genuinely surprised these two cops survived the movie. They are also there to show that it isn't a story on racism because one of the cops is a black guy. Tess and Andre are the only other black cast members. It's not important or relevant, so I didn't mention that fact until now and won't mention it again.
Moral of the Original Story: Men are evil, all masculinity is toxic masculinity. Do not try to save men, let them die as they will be the instrument of their own destruction. Girl power! Stay strong sister! Believe women unless they have a gun to your head?
I admit it gets a bit murky at the end there. That's why I have a better allegory for this movie:
The Rebuilt Allegory: Strangely enough this movie works on a different and completely unintended level (and better than the original meaning). I know it's completely unintended because it's almost the opposite message of what it's intending, above. I am reordering the entries and adding some information that's important in the correct order:
Tess: Tess is a feminist, this story is actually about her relationships with men and how each is destroyed by her feminism. Everything in the story is either part of her, or her relationships with men. Because it's not all over the place, this allegory is more focused and therefore strangely better than what was intended by the director.
The Mother: The mother is a physical portrayal of Tess' feminism, when it "kills", it only metaphorically kills. The house itself is actually Tess' mind. The locked basement where the dark tunnels go off into scary places are her thoughts of how the universe really works, a caricature feminists portray the universe to be. Ultimately these are the skeletons in Tess' closet.
Keith: Keith is a relatively normal healthy relationship. He starts out in the house because he is her male ideal made real, at least in the beginning (rich, attractive, have things in common). That is quickly ruined as soon as the man in the relationship has thoughts or opinions of his own. These are not toxic or "male" thoughts, merely some form of disagreement that is innocuous, probably regarding feminism itself because the relationship ends shortly after he enters Tess' basement. The Mother drags him off and there is a very short reprieve and argument with Tess before the relationship is ended by her feminism. And as soon as it ends we smash cut to AJ.
AJ: Conversely, AJ is an actual bad dude/toxic boyfriend relationship. He still lasts a lot longer in Tess' basement (and without), and "actually owns the house". Even the comedic part where he's measuring all the floorspace is kind of an allegory to feminist's actually taking up with even more damaging men by nature of their feminism and trying to "fix him". He is figuratively living rent free in her head and looking to sell. He won't ever give credence to feminism/drink The Mother's milk. He keeps hurting Tess and she keeps coming back with the promise that maybe the relationship can work. Ultimately feminism destroys this toxic relationship too, but only after a lot of ups and downs and harm comes to Tess.
Frank: Frank, the man locked deep in the basement, represents Tess view of all men. Her daddy issues. Her belief that they are immoral, murderous, rapey, and self-destructive. And after AJ confronts those daddy issues and gets expelled from Tess's mind, the relationship isn't too far behind. Also we can't overlook that he is the "father" of The Mother, Tess' feminism. They all stem from daddy issues, not having a strong father figure (IE perhaps no father, too strict of a father, too fem of a father, etc)
Andre: Andre represents Tess's actual father (or father figure). He tries half-heartedly to warn her before her normal relationship (Keith) begins that her feminism might kill it, then is more active in trying to save her when her and AJ are on the ropes as that relationship lasted longer from his flawed perspective. It's completely fair to say here that Andre shouldn't be trying to save this bad relationship from Tess' feminism's wrath, and ultimately because of that Tess loses both her father and her bad boyfriend AJ as her feminism seeks to save her from all these "toxic males", seeing the two as one threat. Andre is a flawed character, as he's the person who broke Tess in the first place and gave her the impression that men were Frank at default. It makes sense he would try to mend the more broken of the two relationships presented in the movie, because he's a bad father who makes bad choices.
The Police: The police merely represent males who see Tess and know she's bad news and essentially "nope" out of having any sort of relationship with her. They never even set a foot inside the house, and for that they are spared (her feminism never has a chance to ruin these relationships/men).
The Moral of the Rebuilt Story: Feminism is a danger to all of a woman's relationships with men. It may even make you vulnerable to worse men and turn you away from better men, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only way to kill the monster is realize the real source of it is not that all men are evil, but that the feminist's bad relationships have formed bad takes on further relationships. It's now cyclical. The feminist's poor upbringing where she was either hurt or disappointed by a poor father figure or no father figure informed her outlook for the future and ruins her. Learning this can help her free herself from it, signified by the last kill in the movie, Tess blowing The Mother's head off and ending her relationship with feminism. She was always the master of the monster, even if she only realized it at the end.
So there, I rewrote the intentions behind the movie, changing nothing, and have a completely different, and far better, moral.
