Scared silly

Likeable thriller/comedy/drama
Baghead resists easy categorization

BANTER WITH BITE: Gerwig, Zissis, Partridge and Muller

by MARK SLUTSKY

Baghead deserves to be seen on a double bill with The Strangers, if only for the weird symmetry. If the latter film, this year’s semi-sleeper thriller, was 70 per cent horror movie, 30 per cent indie relationship drama, Baghead more or less reverses the proportions, with likeable results.

Directed by the Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark (who were the team behind the critically praised “mumblecore” road trip movie The Puffy Chair, which I admittedly never saw), Baghead resists easy categorization.

It’s somehow silly, scary and serious. It’s a movie about insecurity, relationships and jealousy, but also a country house comedy, and a thriller in the “scared people alone in a house in the woods” mould.

The basic premise has four friends, all of whom are out-of-work actors, go to a country house for a weekend to work on a script for a film that will, if all goes well, kick-start their careers. The idea they eventually come up with involves a mysterious man with a bag over his head who terrorizes a similar group of friends—but then the character they’ve dreamed up actually enters the scene.

But that’s just the shape of the plot on the surface. Most of the film concerns the relationships between the four protagonists. Shlubby, John-Belushi-lookin’ Chad (Steve Zissis) is hopelessly besotted with cute ingenue Michelle (Greta Gerwig), who’s flirty with alpha-male type Matt (Ross Partridge), who’s been on-again off-again for years with Catherine (Elise Muller), who’s clearly in love with him.

Their banter is funny, sometimes in a light comedy vein, but the characters’ insecurities are drawn with deftness. Gerwig and Partridge’s semi-drunken flirtation, as Zissis and Muller look on, is funny, but there’s a real bite to these scenes as well.

The Duplasses tease the audience through the film, never letting on what kind of movie Baghead is supposed to be as it goes through some surprising permutations. Part of the film’s charm is its refusal to sit easily in the horror, drama or comedy genres.

It might be a little frustrating if the characters weren’t portrayed so naturally; you don’t mind that it’s not a full-fledged thriller when their interplay is so much fun to watch.

Baghead opens this
Friday, Aug. 8

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