Barricade (2012)

Fantastic!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

*** Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! ***If you've seen the movie and are confused, here are my observations. I want to watch this movie again for more details (yes, really!). :-) Flashbacks show a lot-- details that add up in the end, though not easily, nor entirely. But they do piece together.While seated in his office at home, recording notes, Terrance recommends a prescription of the exact drug he then abuses throughout the movie-- recommends it to a woman who's husband has died and she is not dealing with it well.The alcohol and drug combo cause blackouts throughout ("It's time for lunch" spoken at night, etc.). The hallucinations begin VERY early on. He likely did not hit a wolf with is car, which then ferociously growled at him, and in seconds is unable to move and dying. He his something, but not a mostly-white wolf. The woman's face in window is another early hallucination. His kids could not wake him up their first morning in the cabin because he's passed out.Blackouts/delusions/paranoid-- all part of the sum plot.He killed daughter Cynthia in the cabin's kitchen--flashback shows her there, quite dead, as she says, "Daddy, you're hurting me." It's a quick line, easy to miss- but it lets us know what he did, just with no details.Dad drowned son in ice bath after again hallucinating that random arms were coming out of the tub trying to drown *him* (likely son freezing and terrified and wanting to get out!) while attempting to reduce the fever.At some point, he put them both kids in the double bed like they were sleeping (after dressing his son-- see the huge man's sweater on boy when he's lying there).We are eventually shown that he beat up Mr. House and locked him in the attic, duct taped and tied. However, when Terrance "finds" Mr. House later, the old man must, in reality, be dead from hypothermia. He was very sick, the attic had to be freezing, no food or water...But he (half) remembered what he'd done.At some point later Dad buried the kids-- hence, two crucifixes in the ground before he then buries the stuffed animal (named Jack the Ripper-- a serial killer-- hint hint) after his delusion that his daughter Cynthia asked him to bury it. In his mind, he buried only a stuffed toy, not both his children.I believe that the entire end scene-- cops, dog, ambulance, and all, is completely made up in Terrance's mind. He realized that he'd locked sweet old Mr. House up in the attic (and likely, House died), that both children are dead (from illness, he thinks), and guilt spurs a powerful story for him--- that Mr. House is saved by the police, that his kids are alive and rescued along with him, and that he is just on his way to the hospital on a sunny day.In reality, possibly(!), no one knew to look for Mr. House there, and Terrance is still in the cabin where he's killed his children and an old man in a state of grief, paranoia, and drug/alcohol-induced hallucinations and delusions.That's what I could get, plot-wise. More sure of some things than others! I Loved the cast in this movie. That's the 7 stars. But as many have noted, it's far too visually dark for far too long and the confusion and total chaos gets old...

Spoilers Okay, I will say that I did enjoy this movie even though I felt it was very confusing. Also, I came here initially to find what other people thought, and whether others were confused also. However, the reviews made me more confused than the movie did. For one thing everyone, most everyone, is saying the father, Eric McCormack, was a grieving widower who was delusional, running a fever, and taking too much medication while drinking. While I agree these notions are true...to an extent, it doesn't make sense, that when the cops burst through the door and find the caretaker locked in the attic, for the cops and the caretaker to agree that 'he' will get what's coming to him. Rather than accepting that the guy was just a little wacky on pills, fever, and delusion, this sounds like a prediction for the outcome of a guilty person who has committed a crime.Now, it could be that the crime was in committing the act of locking the caretaker in the attic. But, they also said he was going to be thrown in jail, and it just doesn't fit that they would be so cold-hearted toward a man who has done this crime under the conditions of delusion and illness. He had to have done something more worthy and heinous as to deserve such a sentence.Several things in the movie lead me to believe there is more to this movie than a sick father with sick kids who all take a little trip to an isolated cabin in the woods. For one thing, the little boy is complaining of nightmares which the mother tries to alleviate. This seems to occur just after the parents have had some 'words'? Were the parents in fact arguing? Then the mother was accidentally killed? Murdered? Or maybe she was supernaturally taken out of the picture by something more sinister...perhaps she released something from the whole or pipe in the ground that started what became a nightmarish turn of events. Was that why the father seemed to leap in and out of time, and did he bring this thing along with him, or was he possessed? And was this entity the presence which parted the curtains when the ambulance drove off? Why was the father even in the ambulance with the children after it was evident that he would be going to jail? And was it this sinister 'being' that led the little girl to believe that barricading the house on the inside was what 'it' wanted them to do all along? Also, why was the red stuffed toy buried beneath the snow with a hand-crafted cross? The daughter was insistent that her father bury it. What about the wolf that the father and the children all saw being hit? Granted the children didn't see that it was a wolf, but they did see that something had hit the windshield, and they wouldn't have been under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or a chronic cough only just contracted a few miles down the road. However, they were present when the mom had her hand down the cement hole.There are just too many things left unexplained in this movie for the answer to be as simple as some of these reviews imply. I think certainly the father has done something much more gruesome than locking up the caretaker and throwing away the key. And I believe the reason he did so was more than a touch of fever, grief, and medicated delusion. Deluded he was, but to what extent? As I said, I did enjoy the movie...but I would have preferred a few more hints as to what really happened and what didn't happen. However, I certainly wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if all the details were pieced together, all neat and tidy. After all, it is a thriller.

I love a good suspenseful horror movie as much as the next person but this was awful. In the beginning of the movie it has a decent start, but that is as far as anyone should watch. The first 80% of the movie is a man running in circles. This movie is very hard to follow and leaves you asking "what the heck?" every 5 minutes. It is totally lacking a good plot. It was so hard to watch but i endured. I was hoping for an ending that would kick butt and make it all worth while. Not such the case. The ending was terrible. They could've made so many other endings that would've been better. However it does tie the movie together and explains the movie but after watching it, it needs the description of horror or suspenseful ripped from it. Trust me, don't waste your time.

Heading out to a small cabin to get over the death of his wife, a man and his children find the location to be the source of numerous creepy goings-on and that someone or something is targeting them inside, forcing them into a desperate fight for survival.This here was just an absolutely paltry effort with very little to recommend about it. The fact that this one's restrained rating means that the film is constantly fighting an uphill battle that it will never win since there's never going to be any danger to the children in order to get a harsher rating, forcing the attack scenes to fall into a predictable pattern of fading out before anything happens to which he wakes up and thinks it was all a dream, or he sees something that distracts the attack and it focuses on another aspect of the situation which is quite distracting and really diminishes the film a lot. As well, there's very little to keep the film engaging when the attacks don't come, and the whole plot twist comes at you from a mile away despite the hint it's going to be clever, and the only thing this really has going for it is the creepy cabin with the raging snowstorm outside, which is quite a bit of fun and definitely has a great atmosphere to it, but otherwise there's not a lot going for this one.Rated PG-13: Violence, Mild Violence and children-in-jeopardy.