#julia garner

-Loved the use of "Beware of Darkness" by George Harrison as all the kids are running into the night, it gave the scene a very ethereal feeling instead of being outright scary. Eerie, I think, is more the vibe.

-Was definitely picking up some school shooting parallels, especially with the "Maybrook Strong" imagery and just the whole premise of a small community reeling from an unexplainable tragedy.

-As a teacher myself, I really did feel for Justine being made into the town scapegoat. I was kinda expecting the principal to be an irritating obstacle for not just her but the narrative, but no, he was a perfectly reasonable and kind guy doing his best to handle an out-of-control situation. Justine DID have issues with boundaries – like, sorry, but she should have known it's not appropriate to drive a kid home from school.

-Archer Graff not being able to tell his kid he loves him is really saying a lot about a certain kind of American masculinity, isn't it.

-Lmao Paul really nepo-babied his way into his job didn't he. The cops are frequently useless in horror movies, especially when there's supernatural characters involved, but there were lots of choices bro could have made differently.

-Zach Cregger loves him a creepy ass basement and a weird ass old lady villain, lol.

-I always love a scene of detective work; I loved the score playing while Archer got to work with his blueprints and camera footage. I wouldn't consider him and Justine friends, but when they came together to put their respective pieces of the puzzle together, mmmm so good!!

-I thought James was an interesting character to give a segment of the narrative to because at first glance he wasn't directly involved with the case. He's a good vehicle for comedy and him just kinda bumbling into the answer made for a fun reveal.

-The tonal shift in Barbarian about half an hour in or so was REALLY jarring to me and was a large part of why I didn't care for it. Here, we go from suburban thriller to suburban fairytale, but there were just enough bits and pieces of the latter scattered around the former (the hair clipping, etc) that I didn't feel as taken aback.

-Children are an oppressed class. The can opener moment oh my god *cries*

-Not Archer decking James AGAIN and AGAIN I was dying laughing. And the scene with Gladys and all the kids lmaooooo the comedy was peak XD