Evil Old Bag

Baghead sees Freya Allan inherit a dilapidated old bar from her estranged father (Peter Mullan) thus becoming the unwitting guardian of an undead witch holed up in the basement. Not an ideal scenario but the fact the witch can temporarily bring people back to life (if only for two minutes) and people are prepared to pay good money for a final farewell to their loved ones, posses a conundrum for Allan's broke and homeless character.

Its fairly obvious the Baghead is one of those horror movies adapted from a breakout short (this seems to be the de facto way to get a horror movie made these days) and as such it has a provenly solid concept but faces the challenge of stretching this out to an hour and a half. It succeeds in some ways better than others.

Filling in the plot has proven to be a struggle, with the writers never getting much further than the set up. Everything from there on relies on contrivance and stupid character decisions to drive things forward. There is an attempt to explain the witch's powers but it is pretty half-hearted and is really only there to pad the runtime. Similarly, a "reveal" near the end that aims to shed light on some of the dumb actions of the characters doesn't really change anything and feels pointless.

The film is much more successful in the, probably more important, area of dishing out the scares. It's pretty atmospheric and while it pulls from the standard bag of horror tricks (cracking bones, lights out, things scuttling on ceilings, etc) it manages some unsettling moments as well as jump scares. The small cast do a good job of selling it all even as they are forced to act in some unnatural ways to make the spook happen (why not just set the timer for ten seconds earlier rather than wait til the witch is messing with you every time). Mullan in particular is typically excellent and adds gravitas to proceedings even if he is mainly glimpsed through flashbacks.

With the theme of talking to the dead its easy to draw unfaltering comparisons with the superior Talk to Me of last year but, given the short came out in 2017, Baghead is no knock off and deserves to be treated as it's own thing. That thing being a completely serviceable yet unremarkable little pocket of horror.

6 crispy mysterious father figures out of 10.

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