‘Barbarian’ Movie’s Ending Explained

• Barbarian’s ending, however, doesn’t follow the expected pattern.
• When Skarsgrd enters the door, the audience is immediately on edge.
• In fact, the fact that a woman is the final survivor is crucial to the conclusion.

There is no surprise that our heroine Tess is the last person standing in Zach Cregger’s film Barbarian (Georgina Campbell). Despite all odds, Tess emerges from the depths of Barbary Street (mostly) unscathed—at least her eyes remain open. But what good is a final girl if she doesn’t have any cuts or bruises? Tess’ survival appears to beg the audience to suspend belief after being held in captivity and relentlessly pursued throughout the second and third acts of the film.

Barbarian’s ending, however, doesn’t follow the expected pattern of the last girl trope. In fact, the fact that a woman is the final survivor is crucial to the conclusion. After all, it’s unlikely that the Mother (Matthew Patrick Davis) would have let a man kill her out of pure volition. We’ll unpack this together, so don’t worry.

Tess first appears in Barbarian as she pulls up to the house she rented for her time in Detroit. When she unlocks the lockbox and discovers the missing keys, everything appears to be rather regular. She briefly panics until Keith (Bill Skarsgrd), a complete stranger, unlocks the door and lets her know that he is a guest. Tess’ head immediately starts to buzz with alarms. Tess immediately suspects Keith when she learns that the property is double booked since he appears a little too determined to disprove her fears.

She initially assumes he may have broken in and starts looking around. As she gently excuses herself to use the restroom, she utilises the opportunity to photograph his driver’s identification and peek inside his cosmetic bag. Nearly all of Keith’s attempts to make Tess feel more at ease make him appear more enigmatic to both Tess and the audience. Tess became even warier of him following his painfully awkward claim that he had no intention of drugging her when opening a bottle of wine if she hadn’t already suspected that he had drugged her tea. Given his portrayal as the recognisable Pennywise in the most recent It movies, Bill Skarsgrd’s choice to play Keith was brilliant in this aspect.

When Skarsgrd enters the door, the audience is immediately on edge due to his reputation as a horror antagonist. His inclusion largely compels the audience to share Tess’ perspective of believing that something negative would invariably occur. He serves as the ideal red herring. Tess can explain to Keith how many precautions she had to take before calming down once they are able to communicate on a human level because he never really felt as though his safety was ever in danger. She even says that if the roles had been reversed, Keith would have moved in immediately away without giving it a second thought.

The feminine gaze that dominates the majority of the Barbarian is expertly established in this first act. Women are frequently socialised to always be on the lookout for guys and to treat them with suspicion. Each of the men meets his end because of their strong socialization disparities and overconfidence in their own protection.

Later, Tess discovers the house’s underground labyrinth, and she instantly informs Keith that they must leave. Keith refuses to listen to her and insists on seeing it for himself before he accepts her assertions that they are in danger. Tess refuses after a little argument and says she will wait for him upstairs. When Keith doesn’t show up, she unwillingly leaves to look for him and responds to his screams for assistance.

Tess thinks he’s in the same place she said he was, but he actually went deeper into the caverns. When she locates him, he tells her that something bit him before the scene abruptly ends and the camera fades to black. When we are pushed into the world of AJ (Justin Long), a notorious sexual predator in the movie business, it is presumed that Tess is likewise dead.

After being forced to face his financial difficulties in the wake of rape charges, AJ makes his way to Detroit. He plans to sell some of his lands in an effort to raise cash to cover legal costs. The house on Barbary Street just so happens to belong to AJ, who enters to discover all of Tess and Keith’s possessions still there. Instead of being utterly horrified knowing someone are probably in his house, AJ is irritated by the inconvenience, decides to go to the bar, and then comes home to pass out intoxicated.

In a desperate attempt to increase the worth of the house before he sells it, AJ is eagerly engrossed in measuring its endless dimensions, which is the only reason he ends up underneath the house. AJ leads himself deeper and deeper into the caves, seemingly unaware of how horrifyingly frightening the basement is as he hums joyfully at the prospect of rising financial rewards.

He is never on guard until it’s too late, just like Keith. The fact that AJ goes immediately inside Tess’ cage and closes the top before the Mother can reach him raises the question of whether the Mother would have murdered him just as quickly as Keith.

The events that follow determine his fate at the Barbarian conclusion. Tess instantly tells him what he needs to do to survive: Remain calm and sip the milk that is being supplied to him in the bottle. Tess is able to use the diversion to momentarily escape, but AJ, like Keith, chooses not to heed her advice and continues to be the object of Mother’s fury. The two later seek refuge with Andre (James Butler) near the water tower after Tess returns to save AJ. Tess warns the men once more that they must escape since they are still in danger.

Andre corrects her one more by saying she has never shown up during the fifteen years he has lived there. Moments later, the Mother appears almost exactly on cue, pulls Andre’s arm from his body, and beats him with it. Tess’ fatal weakness is her desire to save them, but the men’s pride usually results in their respective deaths. She just got into this mess in the first place because of that.

Why then does Tess deserve to live after all the grief she has brought the Mother? The small book called Jane Eyre that AJ momentarily takes out of Tess’ bag earlier in the movie has the key. The book’s main subplot centres on Bertha, a lady who is imprisoned against her will in the attic of her husband’s house.

The new love of her husband’s life, Jane, thinks she is a ghost when she manages to walk the house at night. This tiny Easter egg gives the movie’s examination of how women have been treated historically and socially an additional layer.

The previous owner of the home, Frank, was able to keep a number of ladies locked up right in front of his neighbours without attracting their attention. Frank left a legacy of torment that persisted even after the neighbourhood decayed. The Mother is also seen to have been trained to fear males similarly to Tess, despite never having the chance to live life outside the basement, in an intriguing contrast to Tess’ perspective in the first act.

Since Frank, the man who imprisoned and raped her, is the only man she has ever encountered, it may be assumed that she fears men. Only when AJ reaches the door of Frank’s room do we ever see her shrink back into the shadows.

To that purpose, the Barbarian unexpected climax, in which the Mother voluntarily gives up her life to save Tess and then permits Tess to kill her, represents her intrinsic faith in and solidarity with other women. The Mother still solely wants to save her despite Tess’ initial effort to kill her. The Mother receives a surprisingly compassionate ending in the movie’s final twist. She is only depicted as a monster until the final few minutes of the movie. Before accepting Tess’s death, the Mother gives her one last loving kiss and calls her “baby.”

Tess endures not because of a cliche, but rather because of the centuries-long perseverance that women have had to develop in order to live on in this world.

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