Bagman
As its title suggests a connection, “Bagman” certainly has no relation to Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz’s popular book, which outlined the various crimes of Spiro Agnew. Officially a movie written by John Hulme, it seems more like a screenplay derived from one of those short stories that Stephen King forgets about when looking for something to do on a long train ride. This isn’t very fair though because even one of his real throwaways may very well have scarier moments than what is displayed here. The only possibility of providing any real chills in such a scenario is if you fall asleep and make up a better dream yourself.
Because he was unable to achieve his goal of creating an advanced tree trimmer, Patrick McKee (Sam Claflin) has to pack his bags with wife Karina (Antonia Thomas) and toddler son Jake (Carnell Vincent Rhodes) and start working for his brother Liam (Steven Cree) at a family lumber yard. After they barely settle in, strange voices begin to echo outside Patrick’s windows in the middle of the night, and then he starts dreaming that Jake is abducted. Surrealism, please! Flickering lights on the walls, an ugly doll in the corner, and all the terrible sensations that invaded the family house they keep intensifying, growing and culminating into something terrible. But there’s no tangible evidence suggesting that something untoward has occurred. Still, Patrick can’t ignore the unsettling perception that irritating noises are coming from outside, while in reality everything is hushed up, and that his whole family is in peril which is particularly frightening for him, considering his son. Jake.
In fact, Patrick makes sense. He was told by his dad about Bagman, a blood-thirsty monster who, according to rumor, dwells in a derelict copper mine in the area, paralyzes adults, and takes away the good children – not the bad ones that should rightly be expected hiding them in his duffle bag never to return them again. In the beginning, he thought it was just a myth. But later he had an encounter with the bagman himself, and it was a close call for him. Fast forward twenty years later and Bagman is back again lo and behold (another child is seen getting captured by the bagman in the pre credits scene). Bagman is wanting to take Pinocchio Patrick and this time defend himself against the monster to save his offspring.
I said before that “Bagman” looks like a warm-up act for Stephen King, which is not strictly speaking accurate nor quite fair. More broadly, this film looks like it was pieced together from the most ancient cliches and tropes the horror genre has to offer. This is not fresh in the world of horror, but original filmmakers have managed to make it look fresh and inspired every time the same ideas worked. In contrast, Colm McCarthy, the director known primarily for his work on the likes of “Doctor Who” and “Peaky Blinders” as well as the dystopian pulp pic “The Girl with All the Gifts,” wades through these ideas in such self-absorbed lethargy that his barely awake protagonist seems to require an espresso shot more than he does. I understand that he and Hulme are aiming for something in the style of an archetypal blood curdler, but you wonder whether they had watched more than two episodes of Scooby-Doo. Those too had better conclusions than “Bagman” does have.
In as much as “Bagman” can be called a horror feature, it might reasonably be argued that it is a movie in which the camera could be pointed at anything, with the recorder’s keening, the high pitched noise provoked by children’s trumpets, the most horrible horror around. That’s mainly because it is the last thing anybody would want to do to their children ever again.
Other than that, it’s an utter disaster in every conceivable way, it is only remarkable because it somehow managed to get a theatrical release rather than being relegated to a streaming service that, if you’re very fortunate, you discontinued ages ago.
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