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Welcome, Popversians, to another edition of The Coldest Open, the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. This summer, the horror world welcomes another offering from rising Star of the Sinister Zach Cregger, as the mysterious Weapons comes to theaters August 8. In honor of tis event, we're taking a look back at the movie that put Cregger on the macabre map: Barbarian. 

The way Coldest Open works is this: I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

Sound good? In that case, make sure you're basement doors are locked (and maybe don't read this if you're staying in an Airbnb), because we're about to dive in.

Barbarian's Cold-Blooded Killer

The first thing to know about Barbarian's cold open is that it is exceptionally long. While some (still effective) openings we've discussed in this column last as little as four minutes, this one goes into the 20-minute+ mark. And what's even wilder than that? The monster at this movie's heart isn't even seen for all of that! However, that's exactly what works about it.

This movie begins when Tess (Georgina Campbell) realizes her Airbnb has been double-booked by a guy named Keith (Bill Skarsgård). At first, we're not sure if we should trust Keith, making Tess's decision to stay in another room of the Airbnb a slightly uncomfy one, even if it's behind a locked door. However, Cregger spends time with Tess and Keith as they get to know each other, and by the time they're both going to bed, the initial fear we started out with is gone...

Which is about the time Tess wakes to find her door open.

Even though we don't actually see the killer in this prolonged sequence, this single, creepy-ass moment is so terror-inducing that the 20 minutes or so of genuine warmth between Keith and Tess is suddenly lost, and the house feels just as dangerous as the first time we saw it. Something is in there, and it's even a little bit scarier that we don't know what it is yet.

Verdict: Cold

Barbarian's First Person to Get Iced

Alright, folks, I'll be honest with you - I really struggled with rating the first person to die in the cold open of Barbarian because, well, no one dies in the cold open of Barbarian. In all fairness, I kind of have to mark this one as "warm," because rather than provide the standard on-screen blood sacrifice that kicks off the movie, Cregger gives us the origin story of a friendship. That's against the rules, Zach! And yet, I'm very much marking this as "cold."

Firstly, that's because this is my column and I do what I damn well please, but secondly, it's because this slow burn really pays off later in the film. You know if you've seen this movie that Tess will find herself down in the house's catacombs where the monster lurks, and yet, she's not the typical horror movie character that goes into dark spaces when she knows there's danger. She'll go down, soon enough, because Keith goes down first, and the connection she has with him in this opening is the reason she braves the dark. Also, to be entirely fair, Keith will eventually be the first person to die in the movie. So at least that role is introduced here.

Again, my column.

Verdict: Cold

Barbarian's Polar Plot Intro

Since so much of this plot revolves around the kind of person Tess is - brave but not stupid, resilient but not infallible - getting to know her here is a much of a plot introduction as, say, getting to know a certain murder camp in a very popular horror franchise opening. That said, there are a lot of important details to this story that don't make it into this opener, and I can completely understand an average viewer looking up at this almost half-hour mark and puzzling about why they haven't learned a single thing about this scary house.

But again, Barbarian proves that less can be more in this case. The concept of an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar presence is scary enough on its own if handled correctly, and since the movie does just that, I, the viewer, can spend time getting to know more things other than the answer of "What's going on?" Admittedly, that doesn't serve the opening sequence before Tess's strange night ends, but by then, I'm watching a movie about a person I want to see succeed.

Verdict: Cold

Barbarian's Frozen Snapshots

And what makes me like that character so much? Well, for me, it's the movie's lighting.

I know, weird choice, but hear me out - there are some very intentional lighting choices made when this opener is meant to make you feel scared. In the very beginning, we see the house on a rainy night, lit only. by the occasional lightning strike. Then, when Tess wakes to find that horrifying door ajar, the lighting is so low that anything could be lurking in the shadows. But for most of the time that Keith and Tess are chatting, Cregger uses a warm, low orange light to highlight them, almost like the light you'd get from a fireplace.

That's the director saying, "You're safe in this moment," and because we feel that way, we can get to know and love this interesting twist on a final girl and her tragically doomed companion.

Verdict: Cold

Barbarian's Bone-Chilling Music

Last and, if I'm going to be honest, least in this particular opener is the music, and it's here where the whole "barebones" nature of this opener does stretch its limits. Apart from a very chilling atonal chorus of voices that greet us as Tess pulls up to the house in her car, there's not much that this opener does, audibly, to set it apart from its contemporaries.

(And hey, with A24 working the same kind of creepy singsongy voices into almost every one of its trailers these days, even that was less effective than it could have been.)

But hey, it worked. Nothing felt out of place in terms of sound, and even if I had heard music like this before, it still served the purpose it needed to in unsettling us right as the movie's first seconds begin. Sure, maybe it's been done already, but things like this are repeated for a reason, after all.

Verdict: Cold

Barbarian's Cold Open Temperature: Absolute Zero

In the same way that Barbarian is nothing like a standard horror movie, its beginning moments are nothing like a standard horror movie. More than anything, Barbarian's opening stands out because it gives us so little - in fact, we won't find out the truth of the house until almost the third act of the movie.

But with a list of specifics that is so very small, Cregger reminds us of one general truth that is very large - that is, that there are few things scarier than the unknown, which is the beginning of all fear anyway. Think about it - before you see the monster in your closet, you spend time staring at the door, wondering at the infinite possibilities of the thing inside.

And sometimes, all it takes to be scary is to open that door a crack.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.