There have been a handful of movies that have tapped into the collective unease about using vacation rental spots like Airbnb, Vrbo, and HomeAway. One of the best is The Rental starring Dan Stevens and marking Dave Franco’s directorial debut. It subtly combines mystery and horror, feeding off and building the suspense via the characters’ insecurities. 

Upon first viewing Barbarian, the catch-me-if-you-can thriller by actor/writer Zach Cregger, protagonist Tess (Georgina Campbell) is the damsel in distress. However, upon second viewing, and after speaking with Zach, there’s something much deeper going on here. Tess’s personal trauma is what drives her to sink or swim in the dilemma she’s faced with and the writing exercise itself was very cathartic for Zach.

Actor/writer Zach Cregger bucks the horror genre by experimenting with structure, making Barbarian a roller coaster of a ride. His writing credits include Miss March and The Whitest Kids U Know and this is his feature directorial debut. Barbarian stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long. 

What I noticed was Barbarian was like three movies in one.

That’s right. It’s a triptych.

Do you feel you’ve subverted the horror genre?

I don’t know if I’ve subverted it. If I did, it certainly wasn’t anything that was planned. This movie was written from a purely follow my nose kind of experience. There are two different approaches to writing a movie. You know what’s going to happen, you outline it, you hit your targets and you plan it ahead of time. The other is… I think Stephen King described it as an archaeologist unearthing a dinosaur bone. You really don’t know what’s going to happen, or where it’s going to go, and this movie was very much that sort of a process. I had no idea what was going to happen as I was writing it. A lot of the twists and turns were just me trying to throw curveballs at myself.

Where’d the idea come from?

I’d read a book called The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker who’s a security consultant. It’s a good book but a large part of it is encouraging women to pay closer attention to that subconscious voice that we’re all equipped with and identify threat. Women override the subconscious red flags that pop up so that they can be nice and not have friction in day-to-day interactions. This can sometimes be at their peril. That’s the premise of the book. 

And he gives all of these examples of little red flags that might not seem too insidious on their face but could belie something much more serious. Like when a man compliments you and you didn’t ask for it. Or when a man touches you in a non-sexual way, but you didn’t ask for it. Or a guy insists on doing you a favor that you didn’t ask for. 

As I was reading, I had this realization that as a man, I don’t ever have to think about this stuff. This is just not part of my psychic experience. Moving through the world as a guy, half the world isn’t looking at me as potential prey. I didn’t set out to write a movie. It started out as an exercise of writing for me, alone in my garage, a scene where I could have a woman enter a situation where as many of those red flags could go up as possible. And we don’t know if it’s a real threat or she’s just being paranoid. I just wanted to load a scenario with some things a guy would ignore, but a woman would not. That was the birth of the movie.

How long did it take you to write that scene?

That scene probably took me about two days to write. That was about the first thirty pages of the movie. As I was going, I started to really enjoy it. I was writing the movie that the trailer sort of shows.

This guy opens the door, and she has no choice, but to cohabitate with someone for the night. But we’re pretty sure that he has some malicious intent. That’s the movie that I thought I was writing. And, as you know, the movie completely changes at the midpoint. That’s when I got bored of my own movie. I was like, if I see this coming, then the audience sees this coming, so I need something to happen here. That’s when I put that twist in there. It was difficult to tell if something supernatural was going on or not.

What would you say are Tess’s conscious and unconscious desires?

Well, Tess is based off of me. I basically wrote myself into this role and it’s really about growing up with an alcoholic parent. It’s about codependency. There’s a scene that’s cut out of the movie about her current romantic entanglement that she has with her boss. So often the children of alcoholics find themselves spiritually twisting themselves into whatever shape is going to please their significant other or their boss. I’m one of them. We become pleasers and we put our own needs secondary.

For Tess, it was about a person who finds themselves again and again and again in a situation where someone is able to project what they want her to be onto her and she follows their script. I wanted her to face the most extreme version of that. The prime force in this film is infantilizing her, quite literally.  She has to reject the role that someone has written for her.

How did you get this made?

It wasn’t easy. Because this is a movie that doesn’t follow any traditional story structure… Save the Cat! does not apply to this…! I got a ton of ‘Nos’. I sent it to everyone I knew in town. I had a couple of people express some interest.

Everyone wanted to change the fundamental things that I think make this so joyous and so fun. It was a couple of years of rejection. Eventually I gave it to these two young guys at this company called BoulderLight Pictures. These two young Orthodox Jews who were really feisty. I didn’t know those guys were really close with Roy Lee. So, the BoulderLight guys gave it to Roy Lee, who produced It, The Departed, and The Lego Movie.

One day Roy called me out of the blue and said he’s read my script. He asked me how much I thought it would cost. I said, ‘five million dollars?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, sounds good. Let’s go.’ From that day, things changed, and the movie started going. It was a wild moment where the phone rings and it’s Hollywood. I never thought that would happen to me.

That’s a great story. You’re an actor too, right? What kind of skills do you feel you bring from acting to your writing?

I don’t know that I bring anything from acting to my writing except that I have been forced over the years to say some dialogue that I found to be abhorrent. I think I have a very strong filter when it comes to dialogue. I’m really hard on myself when it comes to writing dialogue. I don’t want to write anything that feels like dialogue. I want everything to feel as casual and natural as possible.

This was your first foray into horror. How did you find it similar or different to comedy?

I think horror and comedy are two peas in the same pod. Both are about atmosphere and timing. Both are about being one step ahead of the audience. Zigging when the audience is expecting you to zag. I think that Jordan Peele’s success with Get Out really gave me permission to dive all in with this. He inspired me in a lot of ways. 

What’s your background? Where did you grow up?

I grew up in the suburbs of D.C., in Arlington, VA. I went to art school in New York where I met a bunch of friends, and we started a sketch comedy group called The Whites Kids U Know. Me and four of my buddies from my dorm would put on a free show every Sunday night. We did that for five years. After doing that every week for five years, we got a TV show called The Whitest Kids U Know. We got five seasons out of that show. From the success of that, I was able to be an actor. I did sitcoms and things like that. It was enough to allow me to write in my free time. 

Would you say you have a writing routine?

I don’t. I kind of wait for the idea and if I like it enough, I go. For Barbarian, I would write at night. I would turn on these red lights and really sinister, ambient music. Then I would write for about an hour and a half. I want it to be fun. I just want to write when it’s joyous. For me, joy has to be a part of it, or the writing will suffer. When I start to feel fatigued, I stop. Right now, I’m writing a movie.

In a week, sometimes I’ll only write two hours. That’s just when the doors open inside of me. I try not to force it. 

Do you find writing exhilarating or exhausting? 

Exhausting and dreadful…! I like having written… it feels good on the other side of writing. If I can do five pages in that hour and a half I give myself, I go to bed feeling good about myself. Then, the next day I feel terrible about myself because I should be writing. I always feel like I should  be writing. 

Do you think it’s necessary for screenwriters to live in L.A.?

Not anymore, post-COVID. Honestly, I could have set up Barbarian from Hawaii. Everyone I met was on Zoom. At one point I did meet the studio head in person before I went off to shoot it. That was a directing thing. As a writer, I don’t think you need to.

What are your top three horror films?

I’m going to throw out the three that jump to my mind right now. They’ll be from the last twenty years or so. Get Out, Hereditary, and Saint Maud. 

You’ve written comedy. Do you feel like you’re going to lean more towards horror now? 

I think so. It’s more of what I’m gravitating towards at the moment. I love horror and I don’t feel there’s enough horror out there that I want. I don’t mean that to be an insult to anyone, but I rarely connect with a horror film in a deep way, the way I will with a Paul Thomas Anderson film or something like that. I want to make a movie that can stand up with the three favorites I mentioned. I hope people can love Barbarian the way that I love Hereditary, Saint Maud, and Get Out.