There’s Something in the Barn (2023) - Movie Review

Christmas is a time for Family Horror Comedies. No arguments will be accepted.

What do you get when a group of Norwegian filmmakers decides to make an American Horror Comedy themed around Christmas?

A gory and heartfelt love letter to Norway, Christmas, and the American nuclear family.

Let’s discuss.

There’s Something in the Barn is a fantasy/horror/comedy brought to us by director Magnus Martens and writers Aleksander Kirkwood Brown, Josh Epstein, and Kyle Rideout. Yes, more than two writers. I know, I’ve established that any time there’s more than two writers on a horror movie (or any movie, really), it's the kiss of death. While that’s not entirely true in this film, you can definitely see some rough edges from having too many cooks in the kitchen. And we all know what happens when you have too many cooks…

In one respect, having multiple writers who come from different cultures helped the characters feel more authentic, and any stereotypes portrayed are done with a tongue firmly planted in cheek. A fish-out-of-water comedy can be offensive, annoying, tired, and/or boring. Family comedies in the last ten years have relegated parents to villains, absentees, or losers—Especially the fathers and step-mothers. There’ve been a few exceptions, like the absolute gem of a film, The Mitchells Versus The Machines from 2021, but for every good family film, there’s been five to ten films like Turning Red, Strange World, and Wish—where either ineptitude or the filmmaker’s personal politics overrode their ability to entertain the audience.

That, or Disney overworked their animators and kept shoveling out piss poor films half-finished to the general public. In my opinion, allegedly, I’m joking. Please don’t sue me.

From a multiple-writer standpoint, this film is a mess. Some jokes come off incomplete, as if there should have been a running gag, but we get none of the build-up, only the punchline. It’s charming in a way because it makes the Americans seem even more dense, but also makes some scenes feel unnecessary. None of this really had an impact on me or my viewing partner’s enjoyment of the film.

The Script is a mess, but the movie is a blast!

The family dynamics are relatable, and each character is fully fleshed out and developed. You can feel the history between each interaction.

The teenage daughter played by Zoe Winther-Hansen isn’t presented as an unredeemable douchebag mean girl. She has good reason for the way she acts throughout the film, and more realistically, her dialogue and performance are nuanced enough to show what an actual teenage girl would do. She’s kind to her little brother, snotty when she has the chance to her parents, but in public, she keeps things civil.

I was also impressed with the absolutely stunning Amrita Acharia, who plays the unbelievably patient step-mother in the film. She looks like Anna De Armas. I actually thought it was her for the first ten minutes of the film. She’s just an incredible beauty and has solid comedic timing. She was my favorite character in the movie as the performance was spot-on to what I’ve witnessed with my friends who have become step-parents.

It’s refreshing to see three-dimensional female characters in a film. Hollywood’s obsession with Girlbosses, Mary Sues, and other tropes has cost some studios up to billions of dollars in losses over the last five years because people don’t want to see poorly written characters. They want to see people who struggle, who are relatable. They want characters to speak to each other like human beings, not propaganda machines.

The writers’ coup de grace isn’t the killer gnomes. It’s the likable characters.

Even the fumbling father is likable, given it’s hard not to like any character played by the criminally underrated Martin Starr. He brings his normal, socially awkward, but good-intentioned snark that’s perfectly in line with the fish-out-of-water themes of the movie.

And then there’s our monster, played by the prolific little person actor extraordinaire Kiran Shah. As the main barn elf in the film, Shah is one of the few little people actors whose face is more often left unobscured, due to his expressive countenance. He is great in this role, allowing him to play both endearing and horrifying in equal measure.

This is a comedy, but be ready for a splash of gore.

While the majority of the film is almost cartoonish in its presentation, when things get real, they get bloody. There is legitimate gore in this that actually surprised me. Especially what happened to dear Raymond. The effects are surprisingly solid, other than the random elves that have poorly made masks, which I’m assuming is due to either a race or gender mismatch for the roles. However, those small errors and inadequacies do not detract from the film enough to discuss further.

The film looks great in 4k. The cinematography is beautifully done, and the lighting is especially well done. The use of warm hues and the classic buld christmas light tones make it feel so much more like a Hallmark movie, which makes the violence all the more insane.

If you need a fun winter / Christmas movie and you’re tired of watching Krampus, give this one a shot. It’s a lot of fun.

This one is available as of this writing streaming free on Shudder.