Baghead (2023)
Baghead
Written by Noah Dietz: 5/24/2026
I return with another from the pit of Shudder Originals. Today’s sampling is Alberto Corredor’s feature film debut, Baghead. Based on a 2017 short of the same name, Baghead unfortunately does feel like an expansion of an idea that can’t quite support itself. I’ve been unable to locate the original short online, but I’d be very interested in seeing it to see if my theory of it being a much stronger concept is correct. Unfortunately all I can do is judge what I've seen, and what I've seen was largely disappointing.
Iris (Freya Allan) has inherited an old pub from her estranged father, Owen (Peter Mullan) after his death in an apparent accident. Iris is down on her luck, so it doesn’t take much for her to convince herself it’s a good idea to live in the bar for a while. It’s a large building, she needs a place to stay, it’s just a choice that makes sense. On her first night staying there, she finds a man has broken into her bar. Neil (Jeremy Irvine) snuck in with an envelope full of cash, begging for a chance to speak to “her.” Iris has no idea who he is, but Neil has made it clear that he’s willing to come back with twice as much money if he’s allowed to speak to the woman who lives in the basement. When he comes back we get introduced to our bag-headed antagonist played by Anne Müller. A strange being who lives imprisoned in a catacomb area below the bar, she’s able to bring back the dead for two minutes. Any longer than that and she’s back in control, so you’d better get your questions in quick before she takes over.
Conceptually, this has the chance to be a decent story. Not to fall down the “it’s trauma” hole that a great deal of modern horror defaults to, but there’s a world where this works out well as the film to occupy the obligatory 2023 “this is just The Babadook again.” What we actually get is a story that feels like the individual plotlines were cut into it. Each major point curiously independent with a borderline sterile connection to the rest of film at large, with what comes across as a halfhearted attempt to pull them all together at the end. Nothing really feels interwoven, with the stakes feeling slightly out of reach right up until the movie ends.
The woman in the basement is also a bad kind of mystery, both completely indentured to the person who owns the bar as her guardian while also being powerful enough to cause physical havoc outside of her allotted domain. We’re told she builds her power the more her powers are used, but later it seems we’re told she’s orchestrated every event that came to this point. We’re given a taste into her origin, and how 400 years ago she was burned at the stake before coming back with a vengeance. It’s a reveal that’s clearly meant to add another level of doubt to the story, as a lot of the questions being levied at us focus around whether “Baghead” is a monster or a victim. In practice it just comes off as an unfortunately by-the-books reveal, with each new moment leaving you saying “Yeah, I guess that would happen.” The story just never managed to connect with me, and I wish I could think of a reason for this outside of the lack of a good soundtrack.
I don’t think I’ve watched a film before that was hurt this much by a bad soundtrack. A decent movie can get away with a middling soundtrack, but a middling movie can’t get away with a bad soundtrack. The music here never helps the story rise or fall at all, leaving the viewer to struggle through a movie that feels tediously flat. The peaks are short, the valleys shallow, and the moments in between feel tedious rather than contemplative or investigative like a lot of them are supposed to be.
As a debut feature, I wouldn’t hold this one against Corredor at all. There’s always more to learn, and I would like him to do well in his future endeavors, but at this time I wouldn’t personally view this one again.
Film: Baghead
Director: Alberto Corredor
Writers: Bryce McGuire, Christina Pamies
Release Year: 2023
Rating: 1.5/5
With nothing helping it stand out against the mass of small budget horror films released year after year, Baghead is another film to add to the pile of shorts extended to features that don’t quite justify their existence.