Baghead, which was acquired by Sony Classics towards the end of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, is getting a lot of praise for taking the elements of mumblecore–stripped down cinematography, unpolished performances, an extreme interest in the minutia of behavior at the expense of action–and ambitiously pairing them with the tropes of mainstream shlock horror. But Baghead is never convincing as a horror film, and I don’t think it needs to be, and I’m not sure it even wants to be. What it really is, is a comedy (of horrors?) about ego, which the Duplasses and their actors convince is scarier than any kind of contrived fright.
Four friends, all wannabe actors and all frustrated to different degrees by the film festival success of a pretentious cheeseball aquaintance, head to a house in the woods to hammer out a script for the project that will give them their big breaks. The gang includes Matt, a charismatic idea man; Chad, Matt’s schlubby”funny guy” friend; Catherine, Matt’s orange-tan cliche of a sometime girlfriend; and Michelle, the adorable younger woman who brings out the worst in the rest of the three.
The only one of the four who seems really committed to the careerist angle of the endeavor is Matt, with the other three seemingly going along solely as the means to advance their respective romantic agendas. Chad loves Michelle, who loves (or, at least, lusts for) Matt, who tells Chad everything is over between he and Catherine but is still clearly susceptible to her late-night advances. As each “friend”s real, purely selfish intentions become apparent, trust breaks down and each member of the quarter becomes (not unreasonably) paranoid that another is out to get them.
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