‘Bagman’ follows Patrick (Sam Claflin) as he moves back home with his wife Katrina (Antonia Thomas) and their toddler Jake (Caréll Vincent Rhoden). Moving back into the old family home stirs up long forgotten trauma, forcing Patrick to confront his fears.
Having been forced to take over his mother’s home and start work with his brother at the family business, Patrick is at a low point financially and emotionally. With a failed design for industrial tree trimming equipment that he cannot develop further due to lack of funding, the man is further agitated as the family home is intruded upon.
When further security measures fail to stop the nightly disturbances, Patrick recollects the tale of the Bagman from his childhood. Forewarned by his father to not go near the abandoned mines, Patrick is told that the Bagman dwells within and seeks to abduct well behaved children. Patrick fears for the safety of his family and anticipates the Bagman is here to torment his son, just as he had tormented him as a child.
Meandering to an almost insulting degree, ‘Bagman’ fails to meet its genre requirement for the majority of its duration. Containing a handful of slow scenes of suspense, the film rarely achieves any desired effect of horror or thriller.
Most jarring are the scenes where any viewer who has previously been exposed to a horror film will be able to anticipate a scare. Surprisingly, even those are somehow disappointing in their generic nature, executed with an almost put-upon exasperation from the film itself. With the story containing little by way of originality, the conclusion of the film follows suit and is painfully predictable.
With Claflin and Thomas’ Patrick and Katrina anticipating the worst for their son, the Bagman looks instead to settle a debt from long ago. Abducting Patrick as he had initially planned, the Bagman manages to trick and lure Patrick back to the abandoned mines. At the end of an awkward and routine struggle, Patrick is stuffed into a bag, to be carried off into the depths of the mines, never to be seen again.
Doing what they can, Claflin and Thomas deliver a loving couple making the best of a bad situation for their young son. With a positive dynamic, the two try to face off against the evil entity as best they can, supporting each other every step of the way.
What may feel like a surprising shift in tone however, is Katrina’s quick exit at the end of the feature. After having lost Patrick to the Bagman in the mines, the conclusion of the film is rushed as the woman chooses to leave town with her son, seemingly spending no time at all in search of her spouse.
The titular villain of the story delivers little. As we learn more of the fabled child-snatching being, we discover he is a creature that preys on well behaved kids. With Patrick’s father warning him of the being, the film does the creature a disservice as plot-holes leave its motivations and execution inconsistent.
Further encounters with the creature provide for a both disappointing and perplexing experience, as the being becomes less and less intimidating and resembles more a psychopathic child-snatcher rather than a supernatural being.
Wholly unoriginal and dismal in its delivery, ‘Bagman’ has the feel of a paint-by-numbers set, where even after completion the whole picture doesn’t quite come together.
Score: 0/4
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