After the sudden death of her estranged father, unemployed Iris discovers she's inherited his old pub: a dusty and dilapidated property that just so happens to come with a permanent basement-dwelling tenant.

As her dad's pre-death VHS tape informs her, Iris will now be bound to this subterranean creature forever and must follow a set of rules in order to stop it escaping. The bad news is the rules are not as cool as the Gremlin rules.

The good news is that It has the abilities to connect the living to the dead for two minutes. That's a whole thirty seconds more than the hand from Talk To Me, and she may be able to profit from the titular character.....

Horror is my favourite genre, and to get to the golden nuggets of horror, you have to trawl through some trash more often than you would think, and here is another one out of the way, getting me closer to that beautiful golden horror film.

If you've seen Talk To Me, you've already seen this film, as it's nothing more than a pound shop version of that superior film. And that was less convoluted than this.

So once Iris has signed the contract, Baghead is hers, and. It's do what she says. But only if the two minute rule isn't breached, or you paint a sign on a step, because that also works.

The film goes for the cheap shot of jump scares, and if you're used to films like this, you know when the jump scares are coming every single time.

The titular character has a good design, and it's not terrible. It's just boring in parts.

Alberto Corredor's Baghead (adapted from his 2017 short film of the same name) explores the feeling of grief,greedy and desperation, showing us the extent people will take just to get closure from their past relationships. It gives us a plot that has been told countless times in the horror genre...wherein communicating with the dead has its consequences when certain rules are not observed. We follow Iris Lark (Freya Allan) who inherits an old pub from her late father, only to discover a shapeshifting woman capable of summoning the dead in the basement...

Baghead isn't the most original of horror films. It's certainly derivative of any number of horrors involving some sort of boogeyman or entity that the lead character has to confront and face her fear before it scares her to death...

Corredor is more into tightening the screws on his characters until they're ready to pop. He builds an atmos of fear from early on and holds it to the end, when supernatural events really go off the rails - but in a good way that is agreeable with the general tone of the film... It's just not a very good one. It's a decent, mindless date movie though and people who rarely enjoy horror movies might like this one. Die hard horror fans may want to hold out for Baghead...

To get this out of the way... there are obvious parallels between this film and Talk to Me that are going to be drawn, but to be fair I think we have to keep in mind that they came out less than nine months apart from each other on opposite sides of the world... so the likelihood of one being influenced by the other is slim to none.

I seem to be far more impressed and entertained by this movie than the majority of the reviews thus far. I am also quite biased to a sub genre of Gothic horror and anything magic. I thought the concept here was really intriguing, entertaining and exciting. They also melded said concept into a storyline that made sense and was cohesive.

While the movie as a whole wasn't particularly scary, there was definitely something to be said for the consistent feeling of dread it cultivated. I also thought this was quite successful aesthetically. Again, while not particularly scary it was most definitely creepy and I think the main players in that were the way the sets were, its general atmospheric nature, and while simple, I also quite liked the look of the witch. The acting was also quite solid from the whole cast. Nothing extraordinary but no one stuck out negatively to me.

I did start to get somewhat of a silly/hokey vibe around what felt like the beginning of the third act, but that seemed to fade away towards the end. I found the ending, if not semi predictable, still clever and satisfying. If anything, I would've just loved a little bit more to the lore. There were definitely some loose ends that I would have loved a little more elaboration on.

I have been anticipating this release for quite a few months and was personally not disappointed. For most, this may land closer to a 6... however due to my prior proclivities I am going with a 6.5 rounding up to a 7. Would recommend.