Sometimes when a loved one exits this mortal coil, they leave us something we don’t necessarily want. Outstanding bills, for instance. Or perhaps a piece of truly hideous artwork, or a cursed doll collection, or a house stuffed to the eaves with worthless junk, and we’re stuck dealing with it.
Or, like the main character in Alberto Corredor’s Baghead, you inherit an ancient malevolent creature with a connection to the dead. What do you in that situation? Do you try to foist it off on a cousin you never cared for? Maybe sell it on Facebook Marketplace? Well, if you’re Iris (Freya Allan), you turn it into a moneymaking venture, because why not? What could possibly go wrong??
Iris has inherited a pub from her late estranged father (Peter Mullan) that’s inexplicably in the middle of Berlin, even though every character in the movie is British and the pub looks like the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead. Despite it being a pub, it doesn’t appear to have paying customers, or at least not the kind you’d expect. Iris learns that hidden away in a hole in the basement is some sort of female creature wearing an Elephant Man bag over her head, and who can shapeshift into dead people. Whatever customers her father had came to the pub to communicate with deceased loved ones through the creature, paying a substantial fee for the experience.
Iris is utterly unruffled by this knowledge—and by many other things, as it turns out, even the discovery that she mysteriously has some level of control over the grotesque woman. In fact, she reacts to the news that she’s now in charge of a supernatural being as if she’s been told she has to take care of a dog abandoned by its previous owner. It’s fine, whatever. Other people may see only horror and confusion in the situation, but Iris only sees dollar signs, convincing her reluctant friend (Ruby Barker) that, really, living in a house with a monster that channels tortured spirits and seems dangerously violent will put a little much-needed moolah in their pockets.
I’d love to tell you that Baghead is a comedy, perhaps a playful take on the concept of money being at the root of all evil, but alas, it is quite serious. You may also watch it, note some familiar aspects (such as a time restriction on how long you can commune with the dead, how the urge to do it becomes too much to resist, etc.) and think “Gosh, this sounds an awful lot like the excellent 2023 Australian horror film Talk to Me.” Now, let’s give credit where credit is due: Baghead was based on a short film released in 2017. This does not, however, negate the fact that Talk to Me does a similar plot far better in every possible way, while even managing to inject a little dark humor into it.
With the exact same running time as Baghead, it also takes some time to develop the characters, whereas here the heroine is shoved toward the audience as if to say “Here, care about this person,” without explaining who she really is or her motivations. It isn’t helped that Allan, most known for Netflix’s The Witcher, underplays her role to the point that she occasionally seems annoyed to be there. Did she read a different script when she agreed to star in the movie? Was she going through a bad break-up during filming? Who knows, but if the lead character isn’t engaged in what’s happening on screen, I’m not sure how the audience is supposed to be.
To be fair, it’s not very engaging material. Even without the obvious comparisons to Talk to Me, there’s little that hasn’t been done in many other “evil spirits torment the living” movies, right down to the bit where a creature holds someone down and vomits in their face. Despite the attempts to make the plot unnecessarily complicated, all of the various beats can be anticipated even if you’ve only seen a handful of horror movies. If only someone had asked Baghead to channel a decent script instead.
Baghead is now streaming on Shudder.