What’s it about?

Iris is young, broke, and newly homeless when she inherits an ancient German pub from her estranged father. After recklessly signing an evil-looking contract with a spooky pen, Iris becomes the pub’s owner and the unwitting guardian of Baghead, an entity in the basement that allows people to see their dead loved ones.

What’d we think?

Tash Llewellyn thinks: Baghead has it all – inconsistent lore, wafer-thin characters, exposition courtesy of medieval woodcuts from Creative Commons, and the incredible ability to make 95 minutes feel like forever. Set in Berlin, the movie features no German characters, German language, or hints that it’s in Germany – which I guess is nice if you don’t like reading subtitles. The movie’s production design does all of the heavy lifting here, as the gorgeous old pub and its nicely bricked basement outshines the actors in every dimly lit scene. 

Across horror cinema, I find that most jump scares tend to be the same thing – an ugly old person yelling at you. Baghead reinforces this hypothesis early and often, with our titular bag-headed witch announcing her presence with startling shrieks again and again (and again). On the way home my taxi driver asked, “How does Baghead kill people?” and I honestly don’t know. Despite the constant reinforcement of the two-minute rule, it’s broken repeatedly and without serious repercussions. Old Baghead is just kind of mean and scary? 

Baghead is a movie to put on when you’re doing something else and you want some background noise, to glance over every so often for a spooky visual. Baghead can give you that, but not much more.