Baghead

It's HBO's "Extras" meets the original Friday the 13th in this experimental "mumblecore" movie written and directed by the Duplass Brothers (Mark and Jay), called, oddly yet appropriately enough, Baghead.

The relatively young mumblecore movement, also known as "bed-head cinema" and "Slackavetes," (in reverence to definitive indie filmmaker, John Cassavetes), always features unknown actors, usually improvised scripts, and focuses on relationship rather than plot.

To me, the cheap look of the movie seemed too studied to feel natural (we have the technology these days to override such clunky pans, blurry zooms and jarring jerkiness) and its aggressive carelessness kept yanking me out of the experience. Yet, the story kept pulling me back in. It was weird, disconcerting, and compelling — like Baghead itself.

The plot, such as it is, follows four 20-something actors who can only get work as extras. So, they decide to write some great roles for themselves and make a low-budget movie. Going to a secluded cabin in the woods to brainstorm, Matt (Ross Partridge, As The World Turns), Chad (Steve Zissis, Momma's Boy), Michelle (Greta Gerwig, LOL) and Catherine (Elise Muller, Vampire Lesbian Kickboxers) are thereby terrorized by a masked murderer.

Or is he a killer at all? Is he just watching them? Is he one of them? What does the bag-headed man really want? (All too soon, the stalker's intentions are made clear when he flashes a shiny butcher knife-blade in the night.)

While movie doesn't follow horror film formula, it still manages to be unsettling and intense when it's supposed to be. Although it isn't meant to be scary throughout (mostly, it really is a relationship flick about 20-somethings with hopes and dreams and all that rot — note the Baghead movie poster above, which is a blatant nod to Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a classic precipice-70s whine-and-cheese fest), there are some scenes in Baghead that rival all of the 8 Films to Die For series, combined.

While the calculated cheapness of the look was a turnoff, the feel of the characters' fear and nervous indecision was very real, indeed. So, hats off to Baghead.

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