Review of Baghead

Baghead (2008)
1/10
Indie Hubris At Its Most Ridiculous
3 March 2009
This movie is one of the more dire examples of indie filmmakers thinking that ANY film which is low-budget and unscripted is automatically brilliant. I am an art school graduate with a very high tolerance for experimentation, and I can dig a very low-key movie if there is some kind of point to it. Even for the "mumblecore" aesthetic, this one tests the limits of just how irrelevant a story can be. It features thoroughly unlikable characters who have minor romantic issues (one has a low-level crush, another a vague sexual attraction) sitting around chatting listlessly in a generic mountain condo. To add insult, this apathetic dialog is captured with hyperactive, aggressive camera-work which never stops moving, favors extreme close-up for 95 percent of the shots, and leaves the very few events that happen in the film out of frame. The "scares" literally involve the characters occasionally startling one another. A barely feature-length film in which even the actors themselves grow visibly more and more bored and sleepy as the movie goes on. If you genuinely do like zero-stakes, zero-production value, shapeless and pointless indie movies, then this may be for you. But do not watch it expecting it to be a horror movie, or a comedy, or a relationship drama, or a parody. It is mostly nothing.
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