Before watching Barbarian, I had the luxury of missing every promotional poster, trailer, and YouTube reaction to the film. I didn’t know anything about the movie, who made it, or even who was in it before a friend randomly told me it had premiered on Max.

Without knowing what to expect, my friend and I threw the movie on, and within minutes, we were left with our jaws on the floor.

I immediately fell in love with the film’s creative story structure and world-building, and only found myself more in love after seeing Zach Cregger’s name pop up in the closing titles.