It becomes deeply tiring for the viewer when a horror film asks an oft-posited question without any new insight or revelations. In this case: “What would you do if you talked to or brought back the dead?”.
Baghead is a scrambled horror film which lacks thrills, scares, and originality. Based on the 2017 short film of the same name, Alberto Corredor’s feature-length expansion trudges through its enlarged runtime, rarely expanding on the short’s intriguing concepts. It is a disappointment as a feature. Baghead lacks the biting commentary that made last year’s similarly high-concept picture, Talk to Me, such a success. It also fails to produce the visual unsettlement that 2022’s Barbarian captured so well. Baghead is the lumpen child of two more mature and grown-up films.
Freya Allen is Iris Lark, a young woman who has nothing going on in her life. She learns that her estranged and widowed father, Owen (Peter Mullan), has died and left her a centuries-old pub in Germany. Being supported by her trusting friend Katie (Ruby Barker), the two girls travel to Berlin to identify the body and investigate the not-so-German named establishment, ‘The Queen’s Head’. Owen has left an eerie videotape that explains that a four-hundred-year-old, hag-looking creature lurks in the basement. It can shape-shift for few brief minutes into those who have died.
Iris learns, through endlessly droopy exposition, that since signing the deed on the pub – the creature, aptly titled ‘Baghead’, is now inextricably tied to Iris’ destiny. Her father exploited and profited off the supernatural tricks the entity could provide. By paying two thousand cash, the recipient could hand Baghead a remnant or belonging of the person they want to resurrect. They wait for a screaming transformation, remove the bag, and the creature can reunite a customer with their lost loved one for two minutes. When Iris thinks she has found her calling in taking ownership of the pub and the creature, distraught visitor Neil (Jeremy Irvine) begins a chain of events far more shocking in theory than practice.
Being confined to a handful of drab rooms for most of its runtime, whether this is a stylistic choice or budgetary restraint is unknown – Baghead never brings visual flair to its environments. It becomes a significant problem for a narrative that should use its limited surroundings to frighten. Photo frames smash, eyes roll into the back of heads, lights flicker and go dark. The cinematic tactics used to shock and unnerve end up getting on one’s nerves. Something always feels known, even if it attempts the unknown.
A few swirling ideas in the film work on paper but must be appropriately translated to the screen. For example, the creature itself has a somewhat tortured backstory. It seeks emancipation from misunderstood imprisonment, but exposition dumps dampen the mystery. The film delivers information perfunctorily – one character’s resurrection is entirely provided for a backstory. These tropes and narrative crutches are as irritatingly familiar as its cheap jump scares. Some characters here express grief, loss, and regret, but poorly staged and schlocky freak out moments undercut those themes. They never feel earned or discomforting to the audience.
Freya Allen and Peter Mullan give functional performances, doing what they can to provide brighter entertainment to such a dimly lit production. Iris has little characterisation, fluctuating between a youthful opportunist and a resentful daughter. When the story reaches its poorly paced final act, the viewer is left in as much of the dark as Iris has been for 94 minutes.
Baghead is a grievous and shallow augmentation of a successful short film. It features fake and poorly rendered VFX, stringing together a semblance of a narrative with heavily disjointed exposition. In talking to spirits of the dead, this film needs to communicate a story better with even its living. Calling it a ‘mixed bag’ would be generous.
