Baghead (2023) - Good premise, bad characters

I think it's fair to say that anyone into horror movies hardly expects deep and nuanced characters when they tune in to watch a man with a mask inserting chainsaws into teenagers.  I'll wager you won't remember most slashers' victims names by the time the credits roll.  They're normally there to simply be dismembered in memorable ways.  However, when it comes to 'Baghead' there's only really three (or maybe four) 'main' characters.  And they're all completely unlikable.

I like the idea behind the story.  There's a creature that lives behind the wall in the basement of an old pub and it can take the form of your dead relatives... if you should so want it to.  But, like I say, I just didn't care enough about the people at stake.  

The young woman who inherits the pub is just miserable and, without really getting much in the way of her backstory, makes her subsequent decisions a little hard to understand.  The evil is tethered to the building, so, er, you could just leave, right?  Apparently, not.  Then there's her best friend.  She has even less depth and backstory than the protagonist.  She's just annoying, mouthy and, well, the best friend.  The two other minor male characters may have a little in the way of motivation, but you won't really care if they live or die either.  

And then there's the sets.  They're very blatantly sets.  Everything has this weird 'clean' feel about it - even the places that are supposed to be old and run-down.

Believe it or not, I didn't completely hate it.  It's a reasonable enough horror film, but in a very over-populated genre I felt it didn't have much to offer that I haven't seen several decades before in other movies like 'The Ring' or 'The Grudge' (either original Japanese, or American remakes are better than 'Baghead').

5/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)