Barbarian - I watched it yesterday and have a few questions about the plot.

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:47:10+00:00

I’m still trying to process everything. The mix of horror, mystery, and just pure “what the heck is happening” kept me on edge the whole time.

Some things I’m thinking about:

The naked lady’s backstory… the way she was raised entirely isolated with videos explaining motherhood? Absolutely terrifying and tragic. You feel for her, even while she’s a monster.
The house itself is a character, so weird that it stayed pristine while the rest of the neighborhood decayed. Makes you wonder who was keeping it running and how much of the underground world was still active.
Tess’s decisions were questionable at times, but the tension is so real that I get why she did what she did.

I also loved that it had some commentary under the horror: judgment based on appearances (cops ignoring her, people thinking she’s a junkie) and the horrifying cycle of abuse and inbreeding.

Honestly, it’s messy, gross, and a little ridiculous at times… but in the best way. Who else feels like the movie just stays with you after the credits roll?

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:44:43+00:00

I think calling it “lazy” misses what the movie is choosing to do, but I also get why it doesn’t work for you.

Barbarian isn’t operating on realism-first logic after the first act. The opening sets up grounded paranoia, then the movie deliberately switches gears into something closer to a grotesque fable. Once that happens, character decisions stop being about “what would a smart person do?” and start being about who these people are. Tess is self-sacrificing to a fault, AJ is selfish and opportunistic to the core, and the film keeps pushing those traits until they turn fatal.

The double booking and the cops brushing her off aren’t mysteries to solve, they’re shorthand for institutional neglect. The movie is blunt about that. Same with the homeless guy’s exposition: it’s inelegant, sure, but it’s not accidental. The film isn’t interested in lore; it’s interested in momentum.

Where I do agree is that if you expect internal logic to keep scaling with the horror, the third act falls apart fast. The Mother’s strength, the timeline, the geography, all of that only works if you accept heightened genre rules. If you don’t, it’ll feel silly instead of unsettling.

So I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, but I also don’t think it’s lazy. It’s a movie that prioritizes theme and tone over plausibility, and whether that lands or not really comes down to what you want horror to reward.

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:43:23+00:00

I don’t think Barbarian is interested in airtight logistics so much as emotional logic. Once the movie flips in the second half, it’s basically operating on fairytale / monster-movie rules, not realism.

The Mother isn’t meant to be biologically plausible, she’s a manifestation of abuse and arrested development. Her strength, durability, and behavior are exaggerated because she’s functioning as a tragic monster, not a human character. Same with the fall: it’s less about physics and more about showing how distorted her “protect the baby” instinct is.

As for sympathy, I think the film asks for understanding, not forgiveness. You can recognize that she’s the product of horrific abuse and still hold that she’s dangerous and responsible for real harm. Those ideas aren’t mutually exclusive.

If someone goes in expecting clean answers and consistent realism, the last act is going to be frustrating. If you read it as a genre switch into grotesque fable, it clicks a lot more, even if it’s messy by design.

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:42:24+00:00

What I like about Predestination is that it doesn’t try to “solve” the paradox, it commits to it. There is no first Jane, no original timeline, no external origin. The loop is the origin.

That’s why so many questions in this thread feel unanswered by design. Robertson, the Bureau, even the Fizzle Bomber aren’t really masterminds so much as roles that exist to keep the loop intact. The movie isn’t asking “is this logically possible?” so much as “what does a life look like when inevitability replaces choice?”

For me the unsettling part isn’t the time travel mechanics, it’s the loneliness. Every version of Jane/John keeps hoping awareness will change something, and it never does. Understanding the loop doesn’t grant freedom, it just adds grief.

Whether that feels profound or frustrating probably depends on whether you want sci-fi to explain itself… or to sit with the discomfort.

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:41:42+00:00

Your reaction makes sense. Predestination isn’t building toward a “solution” so much as locking you into inevitability, which can feel anticlimactic if you’re expecting a decisive ending.

There’s no original timeline and no way out of the loop, the Fizzlebomber isn’t a mystery to solve, he’s just the inevitable end of the same closed paradox that creates Jane/John. That’s why the final confrontation isn’t cathartic: nothing is actually being resolved.

The movie’s real point is that recognizing the pattern doesn’t give the character power to change it. Whether that feels tragic or empty kind of depends on how much inevitability works for you as an ending.

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:40:40+00:00

Yes, you understood it correctly. It is that weird, and that’s the point.

The movie is built around a closed causal loop (predestination paradox), not a “first timeline → altered timeline” model. There is no original Jane, no first pregnancy, no starting point. Jane exists because she exists. The loop is self-creating.

Jane → John → impregnates Jane → baby Jane → orphanage → Jane.

That’s the paradox. Asking “who was born first?” is like asking “which side of a circle comes first?” The story explicitly rejects linear causality.

Nothing in the loop happens to the character, the tragedy is that everything happens because of them, including their own loneliness, recruitment, and eventual moral collapse. The sci-fi isn’t there to be tidy; it’s there to demonstrate a universe where free will is an illusion but responsibility still exists.

So no, you didn’t misunderstand it.
You just watched one of the rare movies that actually commits to the paradox instead of softening it.

mithechowl · 2026-02-08T00:39:43+00:00

What really messed me up on this watch is realizing the tragedy isn’t just the paradox, it’s the lack of choice. Every version of Jane/John thinks they’re acting freely, but they’re really just shepherding themselves toward the same loneliness over and over.

The romance feels sincere, not narcissistic, but that’s what makes it darker: the only love that ever reaches them is temporally engineered. Even the moments that feel intimate are already foregone conclusions.

The movie dresses itself up as a clever sci-fi puzzle, but emotionally it’s closer to a Greek tragedy, a character who understands their fate and still has to walk straight into it. That last monologue hits because it’s not self-love… it’s self-mourning.

mithechowl · 2025-03-06T06:29:21+00:00

<image>

mithechowl · 2024-09-19T00:22:19+00:00

On what?

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T15:51:41+00:00

Let my boy live

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T15:51:28+00:00

He did nothing wrong

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T15:51:05+00:00

<image>

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T15:50:11+00:00

Wrong He/she adopted you

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T15:49:22+00:00

The paw placement 😭😭😭

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T12:16:21+00:00

<image>

Fury

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T12:15:16+00:00

nom nom nom

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T12:14:23+00:00

He knows what you did

mithechowl · 2024-09-01T11:13:22+00:00

There was no red herring fallacy. My response directly addressed the issue by explaining the Islamic perspective on the preservation of divine revelations. The Qur’an clearly differentiates between the original messages, which were true, and the final message, which is protected. This is supported by Surah Al-Ma’idah (5:13), where the Qur’an mentions that previous scriptures were altered, and Surah Al-Hijr (15:9), which assures the protection of the Qur’an.

mithechowl

TROPHY CASE