Baghead

Baghead (2023)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Alberto Corredor

Starring: Freya Allan, Jeremy Irvine, Ruby Barker, Peter Mullan, Anne Muller

From: A few different UK and German companies, including Studio Canal

I probably shouldn’t have expected anything great to have come from a motion picture entitled Baghead. That’s actually on the harsh side as this is probably better than the worst tripe and unimaginative offal that we get from the likes of Blumhouse, which I am mostly happy to avoid and only hear the dreadfulness of such from secondhand sources. To address something I only realized afterwards, yes this will remind you of Talk to Me… something I didn’t really care for due to its nonsense story and insufferable characters. I actually liked this more than that!

Yes, a reason for viewing this is to tell people about this film starring Freya Allan; it can’t possibly be because I wanted to see this for myself after viewing Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes… truth be told, I’ve never viewed The Witcher TV show because I’ve never played the games. I’ve heard plenty of bellyaching about the show and why superfan Henry Cavill left the show but let’s not go down that road. It’s not Allan’s fault for that show’s faults nor is she to blame for me giving Baghead a middling score. Allan is in fact… bewitching. Yes, I have heard that even Freya herself is burned out on The Witcher and is glad it is wrapping soon. Thank goodness she has those Apes movies now.

The titular Baghead is a shape-shifting demon woman who has a hideous appearance in normal guise, thus the guise of a bag over her head like she’s Jason in the second Friday the 13th or the killer in The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Via the swallowing of an object belonging to someone, for two minutes someone deceased can come back for two minutes, but after that things begin to go awry. That’s the conduit instead of a severed hand. Allan’s Iris inherits her dad’s pub in Berlin after he passes away. He charged people to use Ms. Baghead, you see. As her name’s now on the deed, she’s tied to the place. At least it’s not an embalmed hand that teenagers use at parties to have a laugh about!

A lot of nitpick, squabbling, and carping can be done about the plot and some illogical moments. Be that as it may, the movie is just OK and thankfully wasn’t awful. At least this was something that had minimal gore, minimal cursing, and only used a few characters. I may call this “cheap” and wasting the idea by not having multiple characters use that power & see how it goes wrong. Judging by the lousy CG it appeared to be a cheap production, anyhow. I thought it seemed like something best as a short story in an anthology. Well, the end credits proclaimed this WAS based on a short film, so there you go.

A large segment of Letterboxd might not care for Baghead; whether they feel it’s a lesser copy of a beloved movie, the end product is on the forgettable side or minimal carnage/death, it would be a hard sell I am afraid. That duly noted, the pub offered decent atmosphere, the cast (especially Allan) seemed to try their best, the end product was more grim than expected and there’s a germ of a good idea somewhere in the movie… it is still OK and is likely better than too much of the new/recent horror Shudder puts on their service.