Baghead (2008)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Directors:

Jay Duplass
Mark Duplass

Writers:

Jay Duplass (written by) &
Mark Duplass (written by)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Horror | Romance

Plot:

Four struggling actors retreat to a cabin in Big Bear, California in order to write a screenplay that will make them all stars. Problem is: What happens when their story idea -- a horror flick about a group of friends tormented by a villain with a bag over his head -- starts to come true? |

Plot Keywords:

Cabin | California | Actor | Bag On Head | Writing

Cast

Ross Partridge	...	Matt
Steve Zissis	...	Chad
Greta Gerwig	...	Michelle
Elise Muller	...	Catherine
Jett Garner	...	Jett Garner
Anthony Cristo	...	'Priest' the Bouncer
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Stephanie Huettner	...	Girl in the Front Row
Jennifer Lafleur	...	Kristen Thompson
Cass Naumann	...	Cass
Amy Quick Parrish	...	Festival Audience Member

MPAA:

Rated R for language, some sexual content and nudity.

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

USA:R | Argentina:16

Company:

Duplass Brothers Productions

Quotes:

Chad: You're like Michael Jordan, I'm Bill Lambier! I've got no game!

Movie Connections:

References Mission: Impossible (1996)

Soundtrack:

3 of Harts

There's More Than One Use for a Shopping Bag

In "Baghead," Matt, Chad, Katherine and Michelle are four Hollywood wannabes who go to a secluded cabin to write a screenplay. They get pretty much no work done, but spend plenty of time over petty practical jokes and obsessions with who likes who and who's screwing who. Things get weird when a strange figure wearing a bag over his head begins appearing in the woods, freaking all of them out to a progressively greater degree.

"Baghead" is one of those reflexive films about the process of making films. It blurs the line between reality and fiction, and whether intentional or not, it questions whether or not the democratization of film-making is good for the art form. Any four yahoos with a portable camera can now make a movie, but just because a movie is cheap and made outside of the Hollywood system does not make it automatically better. At the film's beginning, the four attend a screening of an underground film made for under $1,000 by a director they obviously worship, and I was never sure whether "Baghead" itself was an attempt at creating the kind of low-budget quality film the characters in it admire or whether it was poking fun at the whole idea. Maybe it's both.

Whatever its intentions, I liked the film, and especially liked where it went in its final moments, when these four rather boring people we've spent over an hour with become actual characters who we discover we actually care about.

Grade: A-