Director: Alberto Corredor
Cast: Freya Allan, Peter Mullan, Anne Müller, Ruby Barker, Jeremy Irvine
Screenplay: Christina Pamies, Bryce McGuire
94 mins. Not Rated.

I love a good monster movie. I also love a good ghost movie. With Baghead, I’m getting a bit of both, and a healthy mix of familiar elements remixed yet again.

When Iris Lark (Freya Allan, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) learns of her estranged father’s death, she inherits his Berlin pub. Upon arrival, she is informed by a patron that the basement of this pub contains a monstrous woman who can help speak with those who have passed away, but there are rules. Disobey them, and the Baghead woman begins to slip into the connection and take over.

I was surprised to finish my viewing of Baghead only to learn that the Letterboxd community seemingly loathes it. I saw a number of comparisons to recent films like Talk to Me, references to the film being boring, and variations on the title with Shit added, like Bag of Shit, Shit Head, and the like. While I can see the comparisons, I feel like Baghead does plenty to differentiate itself from Talk to Me and others. For one, it’s tone is very different. To compare story elements would be to say that Scary Movie is the same movie as Scream (okay, maybe not so much, but you get the idea). Baghead is a story of familial distance, the divide between grief and acceptance, and the inability for us to let go when life asks us to.

Freya Allan is becoming a rather capable performer, and she does a solid job of pulling the narrative along. That understanding she has when learning of her father’s death only to move through grief when she learns of his personal and very literal demons makes for an excellent character arc. I only wish the film had given a more satisfying conclusion to her story.

The mythology behind the Baghead creature was pretty interesting as well, told in a series of narrated drawings and capably standing apart from stories like Talk to Me by highlighting the horrors of the creature that made me want to learn more, and the ending gives an interesting setup for where the story could go in a potential sequel, perhaps structured like The Godfather Part II, where we follow the ending of the first film and simultaneously dive more into the creature’s backstory.

Sure, Baghead is a little conventional at times, and it while it doesn’t hold a candle to Talk to Me’s perfectly executed little horror show, it’s unique enough and unrelentingly spooky without getting too bleak, avoiding the all-too-easy trauma horror while giving an iconic-level creature well-worth revisiting in the future.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe