BAGHEAD (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Baghead, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 4, 2024

There's something evil in the basement of a derelict London pub in Baghead. However, the most shocking thing about this horror movie is how relatively calm and nonchalant everyone in this story is about the entity and the many rules involved in interacting with it.

Imagine how you'd react to the sight of a contorted figure—donning a burlap sack over its head, with fingers that crack and unnaturally bend with every movement of its hands, growling with menace—emerging from a hole in the wall of a dark room and moving unstoppably toward you. Now, measure that against how our main characters, two of whom don't have even a vague concept that this thing exists, react to that exact situation, and there's the most significant of several issues with this movie. Nobody here behaves in even a slightly believable way.

Oh, the screenplay by Christina Pamies and Bryce McGuire has its excuses for this, for sure. The monstrous figure, known as Baghead (played by Anne Müller when the thing isn't an unconvincing visual effect or pretending to be someone else), uses some kind of dark magic to serve as a vessel for communicating with the dead. That's the basic premise, and conveniently, its spells rise up from the basement—whatever that means—and any prolonged contact with Baghead starts to affect one's mind.

We'll give these characters some benefit of the doubt, then, when they later start doing a bunch of illogical and irrational things to keep the plot going. Even so, there's the still that first scene of contact with the witchy woman that makes one think the filmmakers only care about keeping the plot going.

The basic setup has Owen (Peter Mullan), the most recent owner of the bar, attempting to put an end to Baghead once and for all. In case—well, "when," since this is the opening scene of a horror movie—his plan fails, he records a video explaining the threat of the creature, the rules of using Baghead to commune with the departed, and a dire warning not to do that under any circumstances.

There's a couple of issues with the message. First, if Owen doesn't want anyone to take advantage of Baghead's powers, why does he even bother explaining those rules? Second, a lot, if not all, of what happens here could be avoided if Iris (Freya Allan), Owen's estranged daughter who inherits the pub, had bothered to watch the video as soon as it comes into her possession. Instead, Neil (Jeremy Irvine) shows up with a desire to speak to his dead wife and an envelope of cash, and none of this strikes Iris—who, again, has no inkling at this point of the existence of a dead-channeling entity in the basement—as a reason to watch her father's message or just odd in general.

Anyway, Iris, her best friend Katie (Ruby Barker), and Neil end up in the basement the following night, and Baghead emerges. They're scared, obviously, but not scared enough to do more than just stand there in a line, as the thing approaches them, and kind of let out little cries of fright. Odds are at least one of them, likely one of the pair who have no idea this was going to happen and don't have any actual stake in the creature's unknown-to-them abilities, would run. Nobody does, of course, or else, the story couldn't get to its gimmick.

Basically, Baghead swallows an item that once belonged to a dead person and transforms into that person. Neil wants to know why his wife was leaving him. Iris eventually tries to find out why her father stopped talking to her (Wouldn't this also be a good reason to, you know, hear his last words on, say, a videotape as soon as she gets it?). Even Katie, who seems to know better about not dealing in this kind of stuff, summons a former owner of the pub, who relates Baghead's entire back story. In case you miss it or any other vital detail, director Alberto Corredor makes sure to repeat it in some way, sometimes a matter of mere minutes after the information first arises, and that includes a recap of the entire plot just before the movie's final moments.

The big rule here is that, after two minutes, Baghead takes over the incarnation of the dead, so it's vital to stop the summoning before that. Nobody follows the rule or any of the others in Baghead—not once, not after seeing what happens, not after close calls or even a death. That would just make sense, and this movie goes out of its way to be senseless.

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