BAGHEAD **** UK 2017 Dir: Alberto Corredor. 15 mins
In a state of obvious grief, desperate widow Oliver Walker is accompanied by a chirpy bartender-cum-gatekeeper into a pub back-room where a cadaverous, shape-shifting witch (Pat Boothman) with a sack on her head appears to channel the spirit of his deceased loved one and provide the answers he needs.
This creepy, intense short riffs on the classic story of The Monkey’s Paw and its many cinematic antecedents (including WAKEWOOD) in its story of bereavement and desperation. It also delivers its own distinctive and terrifying figure of fear: staggering out of a hole in the wall, manacled to a chair and swallowing the personal possessions of the recently deceased, “Baghead” is a genuinely unsettling character. The two minutes our hero gets to spend with his dead wife provide no release, only further trauma in a chilling, superbly directed piece with excellent use of sound design and decent performances.
Review by Steven West