Barbarian

 A young woman (Georgina Campbell) arrives at a rental house in a horrible neighborhood only to find that it's been overbooked. The guy who's already in it (Bill Skarsgård) seems nice, and invites her in out of the rain while they work out a solution to the problem, but all of the interactions are understandably fraught.
 It's a great setup for a thriller, very believably played by the two leads; Skarsgård in particular treads the line between likeable and possible psychotic threat very well. As the night goes on the tensions diffuse somewhat and they start bonding.
 But we know it's not a thriller or a romantic comedy: it's a horror movie. The film knows that we know it's a horror movie. Things will end in bloodshed, because of course they will.

 Barbarian playfully mines tension out of that knowledge, and eventually delivers on it with memorable brutality. Left alone, that first half hour would make for a killer short film. There's more, though, and the story carries on in unexpected ways.

 This is a movie that you don't really want to hold to very high expectations and is absolutely best experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible. So talking about it is hard without spoiling a little of what makes it fun, but pointedly not talking about it maybe makes it out to be a lot more than what it's trying to be.

 So what is it trying to be?
 It's a take on a traditional horror story that's been around for ages. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything, but it has a huge amount of fun playing with form and structure.
 There's got a huge vein of black humor running throughout, not as jokes (though there are a few great ones); rather, it uses subversion and twists that are not overtly humorous, but are pulled off with impeccable comedic timing. Despite touching on some very current issues, it deals with them with a relatively light touch and never gets dark enough with its themes, events, or gore that they drag the movie down into serious grimdark horror territory.

 The main thing is not to expect any major Malignant-style what-the-fuckery. As energetic as Barbarian is, and as willing as it is to use our genre literacy to play with us, it's not really out to try and map out new territory, and it never really gets that crazy. And that's fine! This is a really good movie, I'm just trying to temper expectations here.

 The script is great, with a ton of clever touches. There are a lot of small 'why didn't she...' or 'shouldn't this have happened?' moments - all easily forgivable and well within genre standards, but they stand out because of how well-written the movie is in general. Most importantly, it's proper creepy and has a few memorable scary bits.
 All the actors are really good, too. Campbell and Skarsgård really sell their situation, and Justin Long joins the cast in the second act as a great, memorable douchebag.
 Director Zach Creggers is a comedy guy, part of the Whitest Kids U know troupe, and he's done an admirable job here of making a horror movie that's very funny without ever crossing over into horror comedy territory. In what's turning out to be an exceptionally good year for the genre, Barbarian stands out for all the right reasons.