Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 21, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Prior to reading about Baghead (playing this month’s Tribeca Film Festival and beginning its limited release July 25), which combines slasher-movie tropes with the recently minted low-budget “mumblecore” genre, I must admit I hadn’t heard of mumblecore. I didn’t know what it was, what set it apart from other film movements or whether I’d want my daughter to date one. On evidence of Baghead, this trend is defined by 20- and 30somethings spending ample screen time discussing and dissecting their lives and relationships, improvised-sounding dialogue and handheld camerawork that’s shaky to the point of inducing motion sickness (and this is coming from someone who sat through both The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield without queasing).
Yet the potential for the protagonists’ navel-gazing to be just as nauseating is deftly skirted by Baghead, whose creators, the Duplass Brothers (Mark and Jay), won raves on the fest circuit for their previous mumblecore opus, The Puffy Chair. Here they’ve used the form to skewer the indie filmmaking scene while telling their story through the context of a slasher-in-the-woods saga, with both funny and occasionally tense results. The horror concerns remain secondary throughout Baghead, and the movie is of more aesthetic than visceral interest to genre buffs, but it’s of interest nonetheless.
The central quartet are aspiring actors Matt, the male hottie (Ross Partridge), his schlumpy friend Chad (Steve Zissis), Chad’s best friend Michelle (Greta Gerwig) and Matt’s ex-flame Catherine (Elise Muller). We first meet them at an LA indie festival screening of an achingly pretentious black-and-white flick, followed by the sort of awkward filmmaker Q&A that will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s frequented such events (inevitable first of the three audience questions: “What was the budget?”). The foursome are convinced that they can collectively come up with a vehicle for their talents that’s better than what they’ve just witnessed, and decide to spend the weekend at a remote cabin in the Big Bear woods, brainstorming a script.
The simmering attractions among the group, however, ensure that the screenplay will be the last thing on their minds once they’ve isolated themselves at the attractive rustic locale. Chad hopes to express—and receive reciprocation of—his long-held love for Michelle, but she becomes carnally distracted by Matt, for whom Catherine is also still carrying a torch. Love stinks, as the old song goes. Michelle takes advantage of a writing exercise to invite Matt to come to her bedroom later in the evening, but instead she’s paid a visit by a silent figure wearing a bag over his or her head. Accusations fly over who the intruder might have been, the possibility that it was all just a nightmare is floated and Matt decides that the “baghead” would be a great subject for their movie. But as their stay continues, it becomes clear that there really is a fifth party lurking in the woods, and the friends start disappearing…
There are a couple of good jumps and solid scenes of stranded-in-the-dark-forest suspense in Baghead, though both the scare factor and the early satire of desperate thespic ambition are sublimated to the film’s real meat: how the foursome relate to each other. Working from a well-structured script but clearly given the freedom to bounce ad-libbed dialogue off each other, all of the leads fully inhabit their characters and reveal quirks that make them empathetic and identifiable, even in their emotionally hurtful moments (intentional and otherwise). Particularly well-played is the friendship-that-could-be-more between Chad and Michelle, with Gerwig (who resembles an indie-goddess Helen Slater) granting shadings to the latter that reveal her to have a good heart even as she sometimes makes insensitive choices.
The Duplasses and their actors remain true to these people all the way to Baghead’s end, which eschews tying up their interconnections in a conventional bow. The brothers do provide a concrete resolution to their stalker subplot, one that might seem a copout, but it’s far more satisfying than similar twists in a couple of recent fright films because it feels organic to the situation and reveals more about its characters. Baghead may be mumblecore first and horror a distant second, but any 10 minutes of it have more craft, intelligence and dramatic interest than all of a “real” genre movie like the recent Prom Night.
