BAGMAN (2024)

Studio:   Lionsgate
Director: Colm McCarthy
Writer:   John Hulme
Producer: Marty Bowen, John Fischer, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner
Stars:    Sam Claflin, Antonia Thomas, Sharon D. Clarke, Steven Cree, William Hope, Adelle Leonce, Peter McDonald, Henry Pettigrew

Review Score:

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Summary:

A frightening figure from folklore terrorizes a couple by repeatedly threatening to kidnap their young son.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While playing catch at an empty baseball field, Don Greenberg and his daughter Emily discuss her recent nightmares. Don asks if Emily recently went to the storm drain by an old mine, which local legend says is the lair of Bagman, a mythical figure with the power to paralyze parents so he can kidnap their children in his sack. Insisting his daughter needs to let go of childish beliefs and possessions, Don has Emily put her favorite stuffed animal in a box of belongings to be given away. Bagman soon appears, paralyzes Don, and kidnaps Emily.

Four years later, Patrick McKee is forced to move back to his hometown in New Jersey with his wife Karina and their toddler son Jake due to financial difficulties. Patrick confides in his brother Liam that ever since he returned, he has been having nightmares about Bagman kidnapping his son, which Liam insists are a result of stories their father told them. A flashback shows the two brothers as children daring each other to enter Bagman's supposed lair, where Patrick feels an unseen presence cutting off a lock of his hair near the mine entrance.

While his mother is distracted, a vision of a giggling little girl lures Jake out of the family's backyard. Karina searches a nearby forest and recovers her son from a strange tree.

Patrick receives an email notifying him that he was denied a loan extension. The frustrating news causes Patrick to break a carving knife he kept from childhood, which he subsequently dumps in the trash.

Patrick overhears Jake talking to an unseen presence. After the house's lights flicker off, Patrick also hears someone seemingly stalking around the house while opening and closing a bag.

Chief Isaacs investigates the house with the police the following morning. Suspecting a burglar, Isaacs tells Patrick and Karina to look for anything missing. Outside an upstairs window, an officer finds a collection of animal carvings Patrick made as a child, including an owl he lost when he and his brother were at Bagman's mine.

Annoyed by its constant noise, Karina asks Patrick to hide the handmade flute he carved for Jake, which the boy cherishes. Patrick inadvertently adds the flute to a box of trash.

Patrick momentarily leaves Jake alone in the bathtub. The lights flicker again, and Bagman's hands are seen opening the bathroom window, but Patrick returns in time to save Jake.

Woken by his new alarm system, Patrick finds a doll dressed in his childhood clothes in the garage. Upon returning to the house, Patrick sees Bagman playing Jake's flute on the ceiling. Patrick rouses Karina, but they find no one in their home.

Chief Isaacs returns the next morning. He again asks if anything might have been stolen, prompting Patrick to notice he isn't sure what happened to Jake's flute.

Patrick shows his brother the owl he lost when they were kids and tells him how it mysteriously reappeared along with his old baseball cap. Liam advises Patrick to talk to Barbara, a shrink who helped Patrick with his trauma when he was a boy.

Following a nightmare of Bagman attacking his wife and son at a public playground, Patrick brings Karina with him for a therapy session with Barbara. Barbara brings up how Patrick's father told him tales of Bagman, and warned Patrick that once Bagman targets a good child, he is relentless about snatching them. As Karina looks through disturbing Bagman pictures Patrick drew as a boy, Barbara explains how Bagman is a common folklore figure in various cultures, but she believes Patrick is projecting something supernatural onto real issues he needs to address.

Patrick and Karina give Jake to Karina's sister Anna Logan so they can have a night to themselves in a hotel. Patrick tells his wife how Bagman took a lock of his hair, which he believes is how Bagman tracks his targets. Patrick adds that he became so fearful of Bagman, his father told him Bagman's weakness is he will rot away if you can escape his grasp long enough. Patrick remembers his father also told him that because a child's love is so pure, Bagman cannot touch you as long as you keep your most prized childhood treasure, which for Patrick was the carving knife he recently threw away. Patrick worries Jake may be endangered due to his missing flute.

The power goes out at Anna's apartment building. Bagman gets into Anna's home and paralyzes her, but he does not take Jake. Chief Issacs links the incident to the case of Don Greenberg, who was similarly paralyzed when he watched someone take away his daughter Emily in a bag four years earlier.

Patrick, Karina, Anna, and Jake go to stay with Liam and his wife Arlene. In the night, Bagman enters the house, paralyzes Liam and Arlene as well as a police officer stationed outside, and seemingly escapes with Jake zipped up in his bag.

Patrick chases Bagman back to his lair in the mine. Inside the cave, Patrick finds various childhood items from multiple victims. Patrick also finds Bagman's sack, but when he unzips it, he discovers it merely contains a clockwork doll that tricked Patrick into thinking Jake was kidnapped.

After paralyzing Patrick, Bagman reveals Patrick's broken knife along with Jake's flute. Patrick uses the broken blade to stab Bagman before fleeing with the flute. Bagman recaptures Patrick, causing him to drop the flute near the mine entrance. Bagman then contorts Patrick to stuff him into his sack.

Karina arrives outside with the police. She recovers the flute, but a locked gate prevents everyone from venturing into the cave to find Patrick.

Warning her sister that she believes Bagman will come after Jake again, Karina takes her son to live with her mother. On their drive, Karina gives back Jake's flute and tells him to keep it close to his heart because a child's love is a magical thing.

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Review:

An eerie urban legend. A toddler talking to an unseen presence. Flickering lights. Bumps in the night. A terrifying encounter that turns out to be a nightmare. "Bagman" has it all, if by "all" we mean "every trite horror movie trope imaginable."

Through conversations that in no way, shape, or form resemble how authentic family members communicate with each other, a couple of characters set up the scenario. Inquiring about her sister's husband, Anna asks Karina, "So, how's Pat doing with the move back to New Jersey?" Referring to Patrick's brother, Karina responds, "It killed him to come back here and take the job with Liam, but the reality is he couldn't find anyone to fund his designs, our medical benefits are about to expire; if his mom hadn't moved to Arizona, we'd be at the YMCA right now."

While the sisters discuss Patrick and Karina's dire financial straits, apparently for the first time, the brothers revisit their past. Liam asks Patrick, "Remember how I took over the (family business) after dad died?" Just once I'd love for someone to respond to expositional dialogue like this with, "No, I've never heard that before," or “Of course I do! Why are you talking to me like I have amnesia?” Liam adds he's been having nightmares about the bank repossessing his car or foreclosing on his house. Patrick counters that he too has been suffering from bad dreams, except his have to do with his young son Jake getting kidnapped by Bagman, a folklore figure their father taught the brothers to be frightened of as children.

Flashbacks diced up for no narrative benefit and delivered in cryptic pieces scattered over the film's first hour eventually flesh out Patrick's fear. Said to be an otherworldly evil with the power to paralyze parents so he can stuff their kids in his sack, Bagman supposedly lives in a lair inside a dark mine Liam once dared Patrick to enter. Patrick never saw Bagman directly, but he felt something cut off a lock of his hair. Before a therapist reset his haunted head, Patrick became convinced Bagman was committed to capturing him. However, strange sights and stranger sounds ever since he's been back have led to a new belief that Bagman is now determined to take Patrick's little boy instead.

Well, not that determined, considering the minimal effort Bagman puts into pulling off Jake's kidnapping. Jake's first near-miss encounter with Bagman comes when a giggling little girl lures him into a forest. Karina quickly follows after the boy, and thankfully recovers Jake from a strange-looking tree that has no known role in Bagman's background and is never seen again.

Later, the sounds of someone seemingly stalking around while opening and closing a bag disturb Patrick. Patrick doesn't find anything upsetting when he searches the house. Other than some carved figurines dumped outside a window, neither do police who investigate the following morning.

During bath time, Patrick leaves Jake alone in the tub. He's gone long enough for Bagman's gnarled hands to begin opening the bathroom window, but Patrick returns to find Jake safely splashing in the suds.

By the time "Bagman" burns through 60 of its 90 minutes, it's almost painfully hilarious that the titular terror still hasn't done anything awful to Jake, or to anyone else outside of the prologue for that matter. Despite the ongoing danger, which Patrick and Karina fully believe at this point, they decide to do what any responsible parents would do when worried about a relentless kidnapper repeatedly attempting to abduct their child: they hand over Jake to Karina's sister Anna to babysit while they spend a night alone in a hotel. Wait, what?

Now that we're approaching only 20 minutes left in the runtime, you feel certain this must be the moment. Surely Bagman will finally nab Jake now that his parents are temporarily out of the picture. Lights flicker, again, causing the power to go out, again. Bagman breaks into Anna's home, paralyzes her, and menacingly approaches Jake while brandishing a sharp pair of scissors. Cut to Patrick and Karina rushing to Anna's apartment with police only to find... Jake is still perfectly safe and sound. Will anything intriguing ever happen in this movie?

Bagman is about as visually uninteresting as a supernatural villain can be. He doesn't have nails hammered into a grid carved on his head. He doesn't have a hook for a hand or bees bursting out of his mouth. He doesn't even have a distinctive prop. He basically looks like a hooded vagrant with a zippered bag slung over his shoulder, not like an unspeakably monstrous entity that's supposedly traumatized Patrick for decades.

"Bagman" probably has some theme about how you can't go home again or bad things happen to good people or something about giving up childish things, but honestly, what's the incentive to suss out a message amid derivative "action" sinking into a quicksand pit of common cliches? Technically competent, yet creatively hollow, if Bagman zipped up his eponymous movie in a sack and hauled it away to a dark cave, I'm not sure anyone would notice it went missing.

Review Score: 40

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