Barbarian

When "Tess" (a rather prone to over-acting Georgina Campbell) arrives at her airb'n'b she discovers that it is already occupied by "Keith" (Bill Skarsgård). Both are meant to be there - some dodgy booking admin - and so after a bit of a shaky start, and a bottle of red, they agree to share for the night. Next morning, on the hunt for some toilet tissue, she encounters a secret room in the basement that looks like it's been used for nefarious purposes. When her new friend comes home, he goes exploring and next thing, we discover a network of tunnels inhabited by... To be fair to auteur Zach Cregger, there is quite an impactful degree of claustrophobic horror to this but I am afraid I wasn't convinced - right from the start - with the plausibility of the whole thing. Whom, in their right mind, would discover what she does and then go off exploring, on their own, without taking some fairly elementary precautions? The drama and peril here is sort of forced upon us despite any natural alarm bells we might have saying "I don't think so". Anyway, it turns out that "AJ" (Justin Long) owns the house and when he turns up to find it still bestrewn with their luggage, he joins in the hunt in the tunnels and the pace hots up a little as escape becomes the imperative against a foe who makes "Gollum" look like Claudia Schiffer. It is quite a watchable affair, I did quite enjoy it, but I struggled with the realism of the scenarios and maybe just because I'm a scaredy cat, I wasn't ever really persuaded! Fun, though - and certainly at the better end of the recent releases in this often underwhelming genre.