WESTPORT – In the slowest week at the box-office since January, only two films attracted audiences – as this year’s spooky season starts with “Barbarian.”

It’s a dark and stormy night when documentary researcher Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) arrives in Detroit for an important job interview.  Finding the Airbnb accommodation she’s rented, she realizes it’s ominously situated in a rundown neighborhood that’s filled with abandoned houses.

When the key is missing from the lockbox, Tess discovers that that the dingy, dimly lit place is already occupied. Awkwardly explaining that the house was double-booked by a different service, Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgard) is not only friendly but he offers to give Tess the bedroom while he sleeps on the couch. Of course she’s suspiciously hesitant but a local convention has filled all the available hotel rooms.

While she’s asleep, the bedroom door mysteriously opens and she hears Keith moaning in fear, obviously suffering from a dreadful nightmare. Nevertheless, the next morning Tess gets up and goes to her job interview.

When she comes back to the Airbnb, she ventures into the basement, looking for toilet paper. That’s where she finds a secret door leading to hidden corridors and subterranean bedrooms that comprise this real house of horrors.

Not to reveal too much, let’s just say there are malevolent twists and turns, revolving around its former owner (Richard Brake) and current owner, a disgraced, despicably loathsome and glibly entitled Hollywood type (Justin Long).

Within Its solid three-act structure, scripted by Danny Chan, Alex Lebovici, Bill Skarsgard and director Zach Cregger, it unexpectedly blends gross, brutal comedy with sleazy horror. Which is not surprising since Zach Cregger is a former member of “The Whitest Kids U’Know” sketch group. As a result, there are allusions to white flight, #MeToo and toxic masculinity.

Credit goes to cinematographer Zach Kuperstein who makes the most of the creepy, claustrophobically cramped setting.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Barbarian” barges in with a surprising, savage 6, playing only in theaters.

“Honk for Jesus” is a mockumentary –  meaning that it’s created in the style of a documentary but based on a fictionalized subject, a parody presented with an ironic twist – like Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the highest-grossing mockumentary film. 

In this satire of Southern megachurch culture and its prosperity gospel, Regina Hall is the pragmatically loyal wife of an egomaniacal, philandering pastor, played by Sterling K. Brown.

Atlanta’s Wander for Greater Paths Baptist megachurch lost all but five faithful followers (from its former 25,000 parishorers) after Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Brown) was exposed in a sexual misconduct scandal. So now he and his chagrined First Lady wife Trinitie (Hall) have embarked on a miscalculated comeback strategy, relying more on publicity than prayer.

To that end, the Pastor has asked a filmmaker (Andres Laing) to “chronicle the ultimate comeback” on Easter Sunday. Not so coincidentally, a rival Baptist church, known as Heaven’s House, run by married ministers Shakura and Keon Sumpter (Nicole Beharie, Conphidance), which many of the megachurch’s congregants have joined, is planning to launch its own larger headquarters, also scheduled for Easter.

When the Pastor tells Trinitie that their triumphant comeback is going to be like Sylvester Stallone’s film “Rocky,” Trinitie reminds him, “But Rocky lost.”

Analyzing her strained smile, Trinitie’s tolerant behavior can be traced back to her strict Christian upbringing in which she was taught that a wife stands by her husband – no matter what!

On the other hand, Pastor Lee-Curtis is simply a hypocrite, a superficial ‘groomer’ who preaches against the sins of “homosexuality” while cultivating his prey. To call his televangelist character underdeveloped is an understatement. 

Expanding on their 2018 short of the same name, executive producer Jordan Peele works with twin filmmakers writer/director/producers Adamma Ebo and producer Adanne Ebo. Although scripted as a cringe comedy, it is annoyingly repetitive and it proceeds at far too slow a pace.

The most inventive aspect is the Ebo sisters’ use of faux TV news clips, particularly callers to a Black talk-radio show, who not only express their views on the megachurch scandal but also question why Trinitie stays with her humiliated husband.

On the Granger Gauge, “Honk for Jesus” is a jumbled 5, playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock.