Ghostly rovers return through a malicious entity living in the basement of an old English pub. Returning to these
grounds after the death of her estranged father (Peter Mullan), Iris (Freya Allan) learns about its spooky tenant when a man bursts in begging to be allowed access to the entity and the spirits it’s capable of conjuring.
Adapting his own short film, director Alberto Corredor turns up the atmospherics in this tale of a communion with the dead gone wrong. Like many a short film gone long (including co-screenwriter Bryce McGuire’s Night Swim), Baghead feels stretched too thin, but it does at least have a good and grizzly Peter Mullan performance at its core.
Like the burlap sack-wearing beast in the basement, the rest of it is chained to one location, making its world feel small and isolated, with very little life outside of the immediate frame. It suffers in its similarity and vicinity to the recent Talk To Me while lacking that film’s scares or nastiness. It doesn’t help, either, that Baghead herself is visually rather uninspiring and only creepy when it’s channelling the face and grumbles of Peter Mullan… with all credit going to Peter Mullan in this case.
The slight story is elevated by a number of late-in-the-game twists and the chilling cinematography by Cale Finot, which makes use of the gloomy Brit boozer setting. A mixed bag.
BAGHEAD is out on Blu-Ray, DVD and digital on April 8th.
