★★★★ First thing: it’s well made. This movie is well made, well shot, scares when it’s supposed to, and does so effectively beyond the technological surrogate. Its form is scary because it reflects the underlying fear, born of a situation, like the Indian title, barbaric (in the most Viking sense of this Roman word). But it also does something else: it disappoints -in a good way- any anticipation of the viewer, who in this genre, as Hitchcock explained, always wants to know more than the director. It is his job, then, to confuse you: that also generates fear. Beyond these technical considerations, the background is interesting: a legacy of rape and incest results in a monster. And the mise-en-scène (with points of contact with the recent The Black Telephone, also a story about an American horror below the surface) underlines what a society sweeps under the rug or, in this case, the well-mown lawn. of suburban houses. At times, moreover, the obviously gifted filmmaker Zach Cregger understands that every horror film is not a little satirical and takes things to laughter-provoking absurdity. It is not involuntary, but a substantial part of the meaning of the film: to distract us and then hit harder. Do we count little? Girl arrives at a house in the middle of a rainy night and the place is not what it seems. What else for? The best terror usually starts like this.
