When it comes to scares, there are few things creepier -- or simpler -- than a guy with a bag on his head: Witness THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, THE STRANGERS and even BATMAN BEGINS, all of which featured villains who terrorized their victims with little more than a burlap sack. Writer-directors Jay and Mark Duplass -- New Orleans-based brothers who made their feature debut with the impressive, no-frills road comedy THE PUFFY CHAIR -- use this disturbing image to drive their fun but ultimately thin second feature, a combination horror flick/romantic comedy set in a remote cabin in the California woods.
Tired of watching from the sidelines while lesser filmmaking talents are feted at sparsely attended independent film festivals, balding Chad (Steve Zissis) and his good-looking best friend, Matt (Ross Partridge), devise a plan. They'll head up to Chad's uncle's cabin deep in the woods of Big Bear and write their own movie, and they'll invite two aspiring actress to join them: Recent L.A. arrival Michelle (Greta Gerwig, LOL, HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS), a cute-as-a-button blonde on whom Chad is nursing a serious, unrequited crush, and veteran extra Catherine (Elise Muller), who's had an unfulfilling, on-again/off-again relationship with Matt for the past 11 years. The first night at the cabin is spent drinking and brainstorming -- the best they can come up with is a lame-sounding romantic scenario -- but after everyone has gone to bed, Michelle gets a fright that becomes an unexpected source of inspiration. Nauseated from drinking, she dashes outside to throw up and catches a glimpse of what looks like a menacing figure with a bag covering his face. The following morning the others convince her that it was probably just a dream, but when Michelle sees the mess she made the night before, she comes to a chilling realization: If the vomit is real so, too, must be the man with bag on his head. Dream or not, Matt seizes upon this scary image as the premise of their movie (hey, it worked out Mary Shelley and Frankenstein), which will be a horror movie about a group of young people terrorized by a masked man. Not everyone is onboard with the concept -- mounting jealousies and the obvious sexual tensions are starting to get in the way of the creative process -- but nearly everyone uses the "baghead" idea to scare the crap out of each other. Things suddenly take a very serious when they realize that a fifth guest has joined their foursome, and he's brought a bag.
While THE PUFFY CHAIR stands as a prime example of what lazy critics now call "Mumblecore" -- dialogue driven, micro-budgeted ultra-indies mostly involving college grads and their quarterlife malaise -- here the brothers Duplass make a partial retreat into a more familiar genre, only to prove there's not much distance between such sharply perceptive M'core comedies as MUTUAL APPRECIATION and low-budget slasher films like DON'T GO IN THE WOODS or FRIDAY THE 13TH and all those vaguely meta indie films about unimaginative indie filmmakers in search of an idea for a indie film. It's an interesting experiment and there's a level of talent that boosts BAGHEAD above the worst excesses of the latter two genres, but it's clear that horror isn't really the Duplass' forte: The simple scenes of these four aspiring filmmakers sitting around a table, brainstorming ideas while tearing each other apart are more interesting than all that running and screaming. leave a comment --Ken Fox
