Bagman (2024)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I saw this movie as the second screening of a date night double feature with myself while far from home, and, like with Azrael, I knew nothing about it in advance. It helped, surely, that I was a bit into my Coke and smuggled-in Jack at this point, so I hereby renounce any claims of objectivity, dubious as they might anyways be. But Bagman, about which I knew literally nothing, was a pleasant surprise and an enjoyable watch, one I'd happily watch again with a group of like-minded and generally kindly friends. There is a lot to be said about the enjoyment of a work that knows what it is and leans into itself, if only for passing entertainment value.

Feeling like something I'm sure Stephen King wrote about in a short story or two, Bagman tells of a sinister character out of an urban legend who preys not on the naughty children but on those who are good. Patrick and his family are forced to move back into his childhood home after his engineering invention falls flat, and things immediately go bump in the night. Apart from the obnoxious heteronormative tropes at play about a man's personal failings as the sole breadwinner and protector of his nuclear family, not to mention the brotherly and fatherly issues that subsequently come to light, it's a bizarre premise due to its obsession with family: his intended invention is a state-of-the-art tree trimmer, and if you think that's not a symbol for his family tree, you're tipsier than I was in the screening.

Patrick (Sam Claflin, in a surprising casting choice for this otherwise completely under-the-radar film) hears noises outside at night and endures nightmares of Jake, his toddler son, being kidnapped. He leaves bed by night to stalk their yard and notices lights flickering aggressively; eventually, when a creepy doll materializes, he becomes convinced that his family is in peril. There is a predatory presence in the house, and its designs seem set on Jake. Karina  (Antonia Thomas), Patrick's wife, dutifully stands by her husband, though she is almost wholly unaware of what's happening and just wants to be sure Jake is safe. That, and that her hunky husband isn't completely cracking. 

Without real proof of anything wrong at home, Patrick tentatively broaches the subject with his brother Liam (Steven Cree), for whom he now works at the family lumber yard. Again, the masculinities issues raise their collective head. Eventually we learn that Patrick's fears aren't just in his head, and that his father taught him the story of the titular Bagman, an evil mythic figure who incapacitates parents before snatching their well-behaved children and zipping them up in his large bag. Seemingly crafted as a tall tale or urban legend, it's not until they had their own encounter with him that they believed the story. Though the question remains, then: does knowledge of this being turn you into a bad kid? Is naughtiness a virtue, according to the logic of this film?

Perhaps we're not meant to think that way, but it's a glaring hole in what exactly we're meant to take away from this strange little movie. Why does Bagman live in the nearby abandoned copper mine? Why was he apparently dormant for about twenty years? We know he isn't solely a curse to Patrick's family, as the pre-credits scene shows him zipping up another kid. It feels like a half-baked monster concept somewhere between Pennywise in It and the bag-laden "villain" in The Soul Collector. And Patrick's method of fighting is about as stubbornly manly as you might expect, meaning that the film progresses through tired cliche after worn-out trope to its inevitable and deeply predictable conclusion. Director Colm McCarthy (The Girl with All the Gifts) works hard to maintain a spooky atmosphere and, I think for the most part, succeeds in offering that sort of daydreamlike quality sprinkled with a few jump scares.

More than anything, this is the kind of watered-down horror that would work well for newcomers to the genre. Anyone at all familiar with horror won't find much novelty to enjoy here, though I found it a pleasantly diverting experience as an exercise in old-fashioned PG-13 spookiness. And there's always the very cute Sam Claflin.