If you haven’t watched writer/director Zach Cregger’s horror film Barbarian yet, you should back out of this article. The best way to watch Barbarian is without knowing any SPOILERS ahead of time – and there are spoilers below. But if you’ve already seen the movie, or if you don’t mind ruining the surprises, keep reading to find out about the scene Cregger thought was too gross to be in the final cut.
Cregger, who co-created the TV series The Whitest Kids U’Know, crafted a story for Barbarian that begins when
a young woman traveling to Detroit for a job interview books a rental home. But when she arrives late at night, she discovers that the house is double booked, and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to spend the evening, but soon discovers that there’s a lot more to fear than just an unexpected house guest.
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The film stars Georgina Campbell (Krypton), Bill Skarsgård (It), Justin Long (Tusk), Matthew Patrick Davis (Dwight in Shining Armor), Jaymes Butler (Spides), Kurt Braunohler (The Big Sick), J.R. Esposito (Pandora), Devina Vassileva (Memory), Kalina Stancheva (Assassin’s Bullet), Sophie Sörensen (The Tales of Toverud), Trevor Van Uden (A Drunk Scorpion Will Sting Itself to Death), and Richard Brake (31).
Here’s the information you shouldn’t know before watching the movie: The characters in Barbarian come to find out there is a homicidal person known as Mother lurking in tunnels below the rental home. Speaking with Vulture, Justin Long revealed that a deleted scene involving Mother and a rat (which make be available as a bonus feature on some digital versions of the film) was cut from Barbarian for being too disgusting. This scene would have happened at a point in the film when Mother is trying to feed his character. He said, “There was a moment after that where Mother, because I wouldn’t latch to her breast, she takes a rat – it’s scurrying by – and bites its head off and masticates it and baby-birds it into my mouth. Which was in the script, and I knew it was gonna happen. And we shot it right after we shot the breastfeeding scene. Zach cut that out. He felt like it was a bridge too far gross-wise.“
Cregger had previously mentioned this cut scene in an interview with Yahoo: “There was a scene that was cut from the movie where she grabs a rat, chews it up and baby-birds him with the rat. I took it out of the script when we sent it to Justin because I didn’t want him to not take the role. But I was like, ‘When he gets to Bulgaria, I will see if I can talk him into it. And so I very delicately tried to broach it. … And he was like, ‘We have to do that. We have to do that.’ He was so onboard. He’s the best.“
What do you think of Barbarian? Do you wish the rat scene had been left in the movie? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
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