The sharing economy is built on trust. When you rent a house on Airbnb or one of its competitors, you trust that the house is real and looks something like the photos in the listing, that it will be reasonably clean and livable when you arrive, that the keys will be present, that the access codes will work. You may expect, of course, some minor hiccups, and most everyone has heard an Airbnb horror story or two, but for the most part, you expect that in the end, you will gain access to the residence and have a safe, comfortable place to sleep.
What you definitely do not expect is to show up and find your house already occupied by a stranger who claims to have rented the same place via a competing service. In the age of rental management middlemen and absent homeowners, it's a plausible enough snafu, and in an earlier Hollywood era, it might have produced a romantic comedy. In Barbarian, the clever, twisted, darkly comic, and surprisingly effective directorial debut from filmmaker Zach Cregger, it leads to the ultimate Airbnb horror story. And that's because Cregger understands that horror movies are themselves built on trust, and Cregger is determined to earn it.
