Baghead (2023)

• Directed by Alberto Corredor
• Written by Christina Pamies, Bryce McGuire, Lorcan Reilly
• Stars Freya Allan, Jeremy Irvine, Ruby Barker
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes 
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOsZq_5s-ak

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a tasty snack of a movie with a very creepy situation that the characters are dealing with. It’s got a great setting, effective cast, and a story that moves very well. The rules that must be followed are used nicely, and we liked this one a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

Someone’s banging on the door at the inn, which is closed. The proprietor, Owen, tells the young man that he can’t see “her” and to go home. The old man then explains to a video camera that the property comes with a special tenant, and she comes with the property. “You cannot let her out of the basement. You don’t know how dangerous she is, but you will. Tonight, her curse ends with me.” But he’s making the video just in case he fails. He then goes into the basement, pours kerosene all around, intending to burn “her” and the inn. Instead he manages to set himself on fire. “She” watches it happen, then poofs the fires out after he’s dead. Credits roll. 

Iris and Katie break into Iris’s place after she was evicted. She’s got nowhere to go but Katie’s house. Then she gets a phone call from a solicitor; her father has died. She travels home to identify the body, and it’s a mess. The solicitor takes her to the “Queen’s Head,” the old pub at the beginning that her father owned. He assumes she’ll want to sell the run-down, old place. The lawyer is sketchy, and he just wants to sell the place. Iris has nowhere to go and stays there. 

She wakes up in the middle of the night to find a man inside the house. It’s the young man who wanted to see “her” at the beginning. He introduces himself as Neil, and he says “I want to see her.” See who? He offers her two thousand pounds to see the woman in the basement. A woman in the basement is news to Iris. “Please. I need to see my wife. I’m not crazy; other people come here for the same reason. Take the money; I know what to do.” She takes his money and tells him to come back tomorrow night. 

She goes back to the solicitor and tells him she wants to keep the place. He has lots of paperwork, including a special page that needs to be signed with an old fountain pen. “There are… traditions.” He also gives her the videotape that her father left for the new owner. 

Katie shows up, and Iris tells him about Neil and the basement. She finds the keys in with the legal paperwork, so now she can open the basement door. 

Neil arrives, and the three of them go down into the basement. Neil seems to know a little bit of the layout and what’s going on there. There’s a big hole broken through a brick wall, and Neil tells whoever’s in there to come out. 

Iris thinks it’s all some kind of silly prank, but then someone does come out. It’s a very creepy woman with a burlap sack over her head. Neil says he wants to talk with his wife who died last year. They soon find out that it must obey Iris, so she tells it to sit in the chair, which it does. 

Neil hands the creature a wedding ring, and the creature swallows it. He then straps the creature into the chair. It screams, and convulses, and its hands change. He pulls the bag off its head, and his… mother is inside. Neil was expecting his wife, but his mother has come instead. She killed herself twenty years ago; she talks to him normally at first. Then her eyes go black and she smiles and says it was all his fault. Now she wants a kiss… Iris puts the bag back over the creature’s head and it returns the wedding ring. 

Neil says the ring was his mother’s before it was his wife Sarah’s. He’s never done this before but thinks he could get it right on another try. “Money is no object– I just really want the chance to say goodbye.” Then he leaves. 

Iris and Katie watch the videotape. The creature is tied to Iris now because her name is on the title deed. “There’s a hole in the wall. She can’t harm you as long as you stay on your side. She only gives you two minutes with the dead, after that, she’s in control.”

 Iris knows the rules and wants Neil’s money. Why not let him try again? Katie thinks it’s a terrible idea; “We’re not safe here.” 

Iris goes to talk to Neil while Katie investigates the pub online. She finds a photo of Otto Vogler, one of the former owners of the place who killed himself. She looks up, and he’s sitting at the bar. 

Neil tells Iris about how he learned about the baghead woman. They go to the basement and try again. This time, Sarah does show up, and this time, they set a timer. She’s terrified; she remembers driving in the rain and then everything went black. He explains that she died but wants to know who she was going to see. “I know you were going to leave me.” The time is up, and the creature takes over, and she’s not nice. “You don’t understand,” it says to Iris, “We’re both prisoners.”

Iris starts to think more and more about her dead father whom she didn’t really know. We flashback to her father talking to the baghead for the final time, channeling his dead wife – Iris’s mother. 

Iris and Katie go back to the solicitor’s office, but it’s been cleared out like he was never there. Katie argues with Iris about not using the creature; she thinks the monster is getting into Iris’s head. Katie ends up leaving in a huff. 

Katie still wants to follow up on Otto Vogel. She goes out to a house in the country and breaks into Otto’s abandoned home. There’s a “crazy wall” full of research about the creature. 

Iris makes the creature channel her father. He didn’t want her involved in any of this, but he couldn’t leave the place because terrible things happened when he tried. That’s how Iris’s mother died. “She’s gotten to you, I can tell. You can’t kill her, all you can do is not use her.” Iris sets the deed on fire, but it won’t burn. 

Katie returns to the pub, but Iris isn’t there. She goes to the basement and baghead gobbles a photo that belonged to Otto. Katie then talks to “Otto Vogler.” She wants him to tell her how they can get out of this. He says her fate was sealed 400 years ago. He tells the story of a woman who could channel the dead; she was burned at the stake. But she came back and men trapped her there to abuse her powers. When “Otto” finds out that Katie isn’t the gatekeeper, he grabs her. 

Later, Iris hears Katie calling from the other side of the hole in the basement. She knows better than to go in there, but she does. She walks through a maze of tunnels but finds Katie and leads her toward the exit. Then she spots Katie’s dead body and knows she’s been fooled. She runs to the hole and gets out just in time to find Neil, who helps her. 

Iris wants to seal up the hole forever. 

Neil gives Iris some sleeping pills and goes downstairs himself. He tells the creature that he wanted the pub all to himself all along and was working with Otto to buy the place. He has now signed the deed to become the guardian, but his signature fades away and the witch laughs. That won’t work, it’s still Iris as long as she lives. He conjures up Sarah again, who remembers more about her death. She realizes that he drugged her, and he admits to that, but says he never thought she’d try driving away. Neil is obviously not quite sane. Sarah/baghead tells Neil that he’ll have to kill Iris in order to really be the new keeper. 

Iris and Neil fight and chase each other all over the house and up to the roof. He chokes her, and she whacks him with a roofing tile. He pushes her off the roof to her death. 

Neil carries Iris’s body downstairs. He gives baghead Iris’s phone to channel her. When the witch morphs into Iris, he demands that Iris release the inn to him and put his name on the deed. But Neil has fatally screwed up. The creature gloats that he’s killed her guardian and brought her back and they are now one. She’s been using her powers to manipulate everything to bring it to this point. She is now her own master and she’s going to keep the image of Iris. She alternates between Iris, Neil’s mother, and also Sarah, and they kill him dead. 

The deed self-ignites as “Iris” walks up the basement steps and leaves the pub which is engulfed in flames. 

Commentary

A very wise man once said, “When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say ‘Yes’.”

This reminds me of “Talk to Me” (2023) in many ways. Communication with the dead with some very specific rules and risks. The setting is really cool; who wouldn’t want to inherit a big old place like that? Making a few bucks from renting out the monster in the basement seems like a good idea as well. What could go wrong? 

It’s good!