Bagman
Bagman
Though the term is self-same, ‘Bagman’ is not based on an account of the theft of Spiro Agnew written by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz. It is more a film adaptation of a short story than the original screenplay by John Hulme. In fact, this is quite unfair in the sense that even a stack of his trash might contain even scarier moments than what one has here. The only way you will get any real chills is if you fall asleep and dream up something more creative.
Due to his unfulfilled ambition of creating nothing less than a high tech tree trimmer, he is in serious bucks trouble and goes back to his old family home, he being here together with the wife Karina (Antonia Thomas) and toddler son Jake (Carnell Vincent Rhodes), who is also forced to go to work at the family lumber yard owned by his brother Liam (Steven Cree).
As soon as they unpack and get comfortable, Patrick is woken up by weird sounds outside late in the night, and even starts to dream that Jake is kidnapped. The mood lifts only to deepen once more—there are light switches that are random on and off, there appears to be a suggestive assistance doll, and somehow insidiousness has seeped into the house. Yet there was no real evidence to suggest how this might have happened.
Still, Patrick stubbornly stands that someone is lurking behind Gillian and making weird sounds (umm… as if someone who looks like the Iron Giant yet hungrily chomps clams) that could hurt his family especially his son Jake.
Needless to say, Patrick has a clue about what he’s saying. While he was still a kid, he was told by his father about Bagman, an evil monster who supposedly resides in an old copper mine nearby, and who kidnaps parents and puts them into suspended animation, then takes the good children – not the bad ones, as you might think – instead stashing these in his satchel, never to be retrieved again.
First, he thought that was just a myth. But then, he experienced Bagman himself, and barely survived. After twenty years both, Patrick and Bitshon, the encouraging half, focus on finalizing the project; Lee, in that regard, makes final touches to Willia Bagman’s story (who is back – we see him kidnapping another kid in the pre-credits segment).
I mentioned previously that the “Bagman” appeared to be something that one can imagine a book written by Stephen King but that is not absolutely accurate nor fair. More broadly, this particular film appears to have been built more or less completely from the oldest cliches and tropes that one can find in the horror genre.
That’s nothing new in horror, but good filmmakers have tried to present those ideas with some spark or energy that has allowed those ideas to work again. In comparison, Colm McCarthy who for “The Girl with All the Gifts” was introduced into such dystopian sci-fi silliness and in the Patricia Highsmith genre of ‘physiological horror’, makes it feel like he hopes to achieve complete support before engaging such bouts of boredom.
I understand that he, as well as Hulme, wants in part to write an old-fashioned creepy story for children, but it seems to me that the only method of such stories that they have had was on a few ‘Scooby Doo’ episodes. At least those phased out with more graceful outspokenness than that of “Bagman”.
Besides that, it is a complete loss from start to finish. The only surprise is that it actually made it to the big screen instead of going straight to a streaming service that you probably cancelled ages ago.
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- Genre: horror, Thriller
- Country: United States
- Director: Colm McCarthy
- Cast: Sam Claflin, Steven Cree, Antonia Thomas