Barbarian Cast and Character Guide

Jan 12, 2024

Writer and director Zach Cregger's Barbarian is a twisty delight, a low-budget monster movie tucked inside a prestige horror film.

Writer and director Zach Cregger's Barbarian is a twisty delight, a low-budget monster movie tucked inside a prestige horror film. It slips wry commentary on modern dating culture, sexual abuse, and the Me Too movement into a white-knuckle creature feature.

Part of the film's success was a marketing campaign that hid its delicious secrets, allowing moviegoers the thrill of discovery. If you haven't seen Barbarian, do yourself a favor and check it out before reading further. If you’re already a fan, enjoy this guide to the movie's talented cast and the characters they inhabit.

Tess Marshall, the movie's heroine, is in Detroit interviewing for a research position with a documentary filmmaker. Hotels are fully booked, so she rents an Airbnb in Brightmoor, unaware of the neighborhood's bad reputation. When she arrives, she learns that a man named Keith has been double booked in the rental.

Tess is a smart and resourceful woman who has recently ended a relationship with a man who won't stop texting her. She is guarded but curious, the sort of person who knows not to drink a cup of tea Keith prepares for her but spends the evening flirting with him anyway. When things get crazy, Tess proves to be extremely resourceful, fighting for her life and eventually emerging victorious.

Related: Why Barbarian Is the Best MeToo Movie So Far

Tess is played by Georgina Campbell, an English actress best known in the U.S. for her role in the Black Mirror episode "Hang the DJ." She won a BAFTA TV Best Actress award for her role in the BBC show Murdered by My Boyfriend. Her first post-Barbarian role will be in the sequel to Netflix's Bird Box, titled Bird Box Barcelona, premiering in July.

Keith Toshko is the man occupying the Airbnb when Tess arrives. He seems perfectly nice and accommodating, but given the movie's genre (and the actor playing the role) you wouldn't be wrong to view him with suspicion. Despite the tension Cregger injects into the early scenes, it turns out Keith is just a nice guy who watches documentaries, works with an artist collective, and reads Jane Eyre.

His chemistry with Tess is so good you have to wonder about the alternate universe where this movie is a romantic comedy and not a horror flick. If Keith has a fatal flaw, it's that he doesn't trust Tess’ judgment when she stumbles upon a scary corridor in the basement. He has to check it out himself, with disastrous consequences.

Keith is played by Bill Skarsgård, son of Stellan and brother of Alexander (and six other siblings, including two more actors). Among his many film and TV roles, he memorably portrayed Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the two It films. That role so cemented his creepy bona fides that it made him the perfect casting for his role in Barbarian.

About 45 minutes into Barbarian, the film goes in a whole new direction. The dark thrills of the sinister Airbnb give way to sunny California, where actor AJ Gilbride is driving in his convertible singing along to Donovan's Riki Tiki Tavi.

AJ is not a good person. His drive is interrupted by a phone call from his management letting him know he has been accused of rape by a co-star. The allegations force him to close ranks and liquidate his assets, which include rental properties outside of Detroit.

AJ heads to the Airbnb and stumbles upon the secret dungeon from the first act. His first instinct is to measure the square footage. He ends up being captured and, at every turn, makes the most selfish choice available. Even after a moment of self-reflection that hints at his redemption, he reverts to form by sacrificing Tess to save his own skin.

Justin Long's casting is another stroke of genius by Cregger. Like Skarsgård, the liable Long is playing against type. The comic actor, and former boyfriend of Drew Barrymore, has played dorky nice guys in movies such as Dodgeball, Live Free or Die Hard, and Galaxy Quest. He is also the voice of Alvin in the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies.

Barbarian has a number of villains, including AJ Gilbride and a monster to be named later, but the most horrifying of them all is Frank, the original owner of the Airbnb. In flashbacks, we see Frank disguise himself as a repairman to kidnap and enslave a woman. It turns out this is a favorite hobby of his, and the basement dungeon has been the scene of dozens of similar abductions. Worse still, Frank has fathered children with his victims, and those children have been victims of his predatory behavior as well.

Related: Barbarian: Why It's a Relevant Take on Accountability, Abuse, and Society

Frank is played by Richard Brake, a "that guy" actor who has mostly played villains in films such as Doom, Cold Mountain, Batman Begins, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and Rob Zombie's Halloween II.

The Mother is Barbarian's monster, a super strong, physically deformed woman who is apparently the product of generations of inbreeding. She lives in the dungeon beneath the Airbnb and captures human prey to raise as her own children. The one person The Mother fears is Frank, her father/grandfather/abuser.

The Mother kills Keith for resisting her but keeps Tess in a cage to feed and nurture. AJ ends up in that cage as well but resists a gnarly milk bottle and ends up in a much less appetizing situation. Despite The Mother's violent tendencies, she has a soft spot for Tess that leads her to save Tess’ life during the film's climax.

The Mother is played, under many layers of prosthetics, by 6' 8" musician/actor Matthew Patrick Davis. This is Davis’ first major role, but he has had walk-on parts on a slew of TV shows.