The Movie Group Chat: Barbarian w/ Xavier Stiles

Is Barbarian brilliant, completely absurd… or somehow both? For the final movie of spooky season, artist, writer, and filmmaker Xavier Stiles joins The Movie Group Chat to talk about Zach Cregger’s Barbarian — and this one turns into a real debate. Xavier and Chet defend the movie’s unpredictability, perspective, and willingness to get weird. Jeremy and Justin have a different problem: how many bad decisions can characters make before you stop buying into the movie entirely? We get into Barbarian’s wild structure, Georgina Campbell and Justin Long’s performances, Bill Skarsgård’s perfect casting, the movie’s female perspective, horror logic, suspension of disbelief, and why horror continues to be one of the best places in Hollywood for filmmakers to take real creative risks. The conversation eventually becomes bigger than Barbarian: What is a horror movie actually supposed to do? Does it need to scare you? Make sense? Say something deeper? Or is taking the audience on a wild ride enough? Plus, Xavier explains why horror might be one of the purest and most creatively free genres in filmmaking — and why its success could teach the rest of Hollywood something about getting audiences excited about movies again. Where do you land on Barbarian? Brilliant, absurd, or both? We believe in movies. Join The Movie Group Chat. #Barbarian #HorrorMovies #JustinLong #ZachCregger #TheMovieGroupChat