Iris is a would be art student who is down and out in London, living off the largest of her best friend Katie. Anyways as luck, I guess, would have it her estranged father has died and left Iris a centuries-old pub in Berlin. Problem is said pub needs major renovation and is falling apart at the seams. She travels to Berlin to identify the burnt remains of her father to meet with The Solicitor to discuss her father’s estate. She duly signs the deeds to the pub without knowing that in the pub’s basement – Baghead – shape-shifting creature that can transform into the dead is inexplicable tied to whoever owns the premise. Hey those old fixer uppers nearly always have hidden issues. On the bright side punters are prepared to pay a couple of thousand quid a go to have two minutes with Baghead in order to commune with the dead. She discovers this via her first customer, Neil, who has lost his wife and wants to say good bye apparently. Iris is tempted to exploit the creature’s power, but like her father discovers this comes at a high price. With the help of Katie Iris needs to learn to keep control of Baghead, who is a little minx at the best of times, and find a way to destroy the creature before it destroys them all and escapes from the basement.

Baghead is the definition of a small self-contained horror movie that is not trying to live above its tale of revenant shenanigans. The movie is concise, has its shock scenes, but relies on the building atmosphere and tension to get the audience on side with what is happening on screen. The concept is simple, the rules are gradually brought into the light, and the resolution remains elusive but not out of the reach of our protagonists. There are no major scenes or outright over reliance on CGI shock scenes to keep the audience involved, the story is strong enough here, and the mystery of how the hell Iris is going to get out of the situation she finds herself in, and I’m not going to say through no fault of her own, she tried to take advantage after all.

Like all good horror movies there are some very simple rules, that have to be followed else things are going to get real bad real quick. The client can only spend two minutes with their dearly departed, Baghead then comes back and let the minds games begin. The creature must follow the directions of the owner of the pub, or does it, there’s some grey area here which might just be Iris not getting on the program quick enough. There’s a whole in the back wall which no one can pass through as this is the den of Baghead, and it’s not quite explained what will happen if someone crosses this barrier, but nothing good I’m sure. The owner of the pub is required to keep Baghead under control and contained to the basement, else the creature will take out her revenge on the surrounding areas. Guess we are all up to play then, simple rules are best for the horror genre in my opinion, and this movie nails that requirement.

So we have our rules but we also get a background on Baghead and learn the creature is a she who was victimised by your typical cult seeking supernatural powers. Hence the whole revenant thing, though the whole experience really did nothing for the cult members, it ended badly. Which I guess brings us to the Lawyer, who I can’t quite work out, is he some sort of paranormal referee or a hangover from the cult, with his destiny tied to Baghead? Anyways Katie discovers the background story, but fails to find a way out for Iris, who is kind of stuck with the supernatural parasite. So yeah the movie drops rules and background on us, what more do you really need before getting down and dirty with the actual narrative?

For the most part the movie suggests things, with the odd jump scare thrown in to keep the audience on their toes. There’s not a lot of the crimson stuff going down to have gorehounds howling at the moon, but perhaps just enough to exclude this one from pre-teen viewing. There is a nice grunge environment going down and Baghead herself is suitably old and maybe decaying, we only get brief glimpses under the bag to see what she looks like. So this movie is definitely a horror flick, but the horror elements are not being allowed to overload all the other elements on the screen.

In terms of the narrative the first couple of times that Iris goes down to the basement I was intrigued, we discover some new things, get introduced to the main supernatural antagonist and the tension is there, though maybe not exactly dripping off the screen. Unfortunately, subsequent visits hold less surprises and the movie faces the danger of slipping into the done and dusted, it’s here that Alberto Corredor retains our interest with the character of Neil, who initially seems to be solely concerned with his recently decease wife but who has other motivations that come to light as the movie progresses. So hey everything is kept fresh, and of course the added bonus is Iris is tempted by her twenty pieces of silver, so to speak.

The Director gets the most out of his small cast, with everyone delivering on their performances. Freya Allan (Iris) brings across a sort of quiet desperation as her situation first improves then worsens. Beside which Ms Allan sure is nice to look at. Jeremy Irvine (Neil) provides the initial information about Baghead and managed to fool me as to his motivations, things get progressively dicey as Neil does his thing and Irvine nails that requirement. And finally I wanted to make a quick mention of Ruby Barker, who plays the much put upon Katie. I was really enjoying this character as she provides not only a good mate to Iris but also fills in as the Van Helsing expert most horror flicks based on passed misdeeds need. Barker is right across things and proves to be a real asset to the movie.

This probably hasn’t been my best review ever; I’m putting this down to the movie being solid but not crashing any sort of expectations. Baghead is solid, delivers on its promises, but doesn’t add anything we haven’t seen before. To be honest Blumhouse could learn from this flick, but for the rest of us another week another run of the mill horror flick. Giving it a recommendation, the movie doesn’t seem to do anything wrong, but it doesn’t add to the genre overly either. Technically near perfect horror movie, which does what it can with what it has available. I can watch movies like Baghead day in day out, decent enough horror flick, if nothing spectacular.