After her estranged father’s death, Iris inherits an old, decrepit pub on the outskirts of Berlin. Unemployed and broke as hell, it doesn’t take long for her to decide she’s selling the shack to the highest bidder. But she first wants to have at least a look at the place. A decision she’s to regret, as on her very first night she’s awoken by a desperate man pounding on the door. He has a most peculiar request: in exchange for a handsome sum of dough, he’d like to have a word with the creature that is living in her basement, so that he can talk to his dead wife. Astonished by the intensity of Berlin’s psychotropic drugs, Iris slams the door in his face. But then she stumbles upon one of daddy’s old VHS tapes (for the kiddies among you, that’s a prehistoric form of streaming on a physical support) with “Instructions” scribbled on the cover. That’s how she learns she’s roomies with someone – something? – called Baghead, who supposedly has the power to incarnate the deceased. The next evening the same man bangs on her door again. But this time she’s swayed by his money and lets him enter…
Alberto Corredor’s BAGHEAD, the feature-length version of his incredible short that was screened at the BIFFF in 2019, ticks all of our boxes when it comes to horror. A suffocating atmosphere? Check. A perfect build-up? Check. Lots of hazy, fleeting things in the dark corners of the background? Check. Even more very clear monsters in the foreground? Check and checkmate! The perfect mean lean horror machine, starring Freya Allan (THE WITCHER, the next THE PLANET OF THE APES installment) and Peter Mullan (WAR HORSE)!