There’s Something in the Barn, horror fare that serves two masters

The line between peanut butter and chocolate mixture is a fine one, isn’t it? I try to make chocolate, and peanut butter pretzels every December, and while edible, they always fall short of how perfect they should taste. Christmas horror films are like my erstwhile Reese’s concoction too; if there’s too much horror and gore then it will limit its audience, but if it aims for the funnier route then the jokes have to hit. There’s Something in the Barn has a great premise and nails the first hour; but then, akin to the cake that’s risen well up until the end, it falls just a bit flat.

The plot in There’s Something in the Barn is ripe for humor, satire, and horror. An American family has inherited a picturesque remote cabin in the Norwegian woods. They do all of the touristy things that make the locals cringe but are genuinely nice people. The family stops by the side of the road and angers a male moose. The all have annoying “Norway” toboggans on their heads and engage in the touristy tropes of foreign countries.

Unbeknown to them for the first half of the film is that their relative who passed away did so under mysterious circumstances. He was trying to burn his barn down, cursing an unseen thing until he was set on fire and then pushed through the second-story window. As the family is engaging in the tourist scene, they meet a kind local who runs a forgotten folk museum in the center of town. He goes on to tell the tweenage son that barn elves are common in Norway, and can be very helpful if you treat them correctly.

The tween meets their barn elf and assures it that the family will abide by the rules of the farm. This grants the family the rewards of the elves, like shoveling snow and chopping firewood, even if their dad doesn’t know how it keeps happening. He attributes it to the way Norway seemingly runs itself, which is a playful in-joke as to how the country is seen as ideal and perfect in every way. * The youth lets the family in on the secrets to keeping the barn elf happy, but of course, they don’t believe him and proceed to celebrate Christmas in all its neon, noisy glory.

This starts to raise the ire of the barn elf, which begets a small horde of barn elves, which aren’t as kind as the initial one that the tween befriended. Instead, these elves are intent on fighting the family, trying to kill them and drinking all of their booze. As the chaos and battles ensue there are some humorous jokes, references to the Oslo Peace Accord, and a couple of over-the-top bloody death sequences.

The first two-thirds of There’s Something in the Barn manages to balance the tension of the family’s behavior to the potential malevolence of the barn elves very well. Any viewer will know that the family will fall short and that the elves will turn violent, but the movie does a very serviceable job up until that point. It’s only in that final third that viewers would’ve wished that the movie had chosen a side. Is the film a jokey exploit on rural folklore and outside tourists or does it want to be a sly, violent take on the holidays?

Let’s be clear, it is possible to be both, but to accomplish that feat the film needs to be fearless. Dead Snow and Violent Night come to mind as snow-driven or relatively recent Christmas films that managed to be festive and filled with action. One could also see where it could’ve crossed over into the interest area of Ash Vs. The Evil Dead, but it needed to better dialogue and more monsters for that. Gremlins is another candidate that also operates in very similar territory to There’s Something in the Barn. If There’s Something in Barn had been a bit more grotesque, creative in their kills or hadn’t compromised on its ending then it would’ve come closer to being satisfying.

In the end, it tried to happily satisfy all of the story threads. The first two threads were worth exploring and would’ve yielded a better holiday horror tale. The final thread was more ‘Hollywood’ and not the good kind. It’s the cheesy side of movies that dictates that it has to have a happy ending. In this case, the story of a coarse family that offends a barn elf is one that could’ve benefitted from going full evil. It’s an unbelievable premise that its viewers would’ve held on for, had the film gone fully mental.

It’s not that There’s Something in the Barn is a bad movie. The poster is great. The trailer presents the good aspects of the film in a manner that makes horror holiday fans grin with anticipation. However, for a film that’s rated R, it’s rather tame and seems to have earned that designation simply by the F bombs that the teenager in the film utters at every turn. If you were to simply look at the violence then the film would’ve probably earned a PG-13. Alas, this goes back to the film trying to pick its audience and while it’s not a complete waste of time, you do wish that it had chosen a more resolute path than trying to please two camps.

There’s Something in the Barn is rated R for violence, bloody scenes and language.