Bagman-- My Take On The Movie With Spoilers!

Plot: Patrick must save his son from a sinister threat that has haunted him since childhood.

Quick Movie Review

Bagman had the potential to be a creepy flick, considering it has a monster that could have been nightmare fuel. Imagine a monster that doesn't prey on naughty kids, but the good ones, and once he marks them by cutting a lock of their hair, stalks them until he can stuff them in his bag.

This entire premise should have been pretty scary, right?

Except that the movie is as dull as it can it be, to the point that even Sam Claflin can't save it. In fact, the actor looks disinterested for the most part, as if he doesn't even want to be there. He doesn't share any chemistry with Antonia Thomas and Carell Vincent Rhoden, who is turn don't share any with each other. The family doesn't look like a family, and there are no scenes to establish that they deeply care enough with each other. Considering the story is about a monster capturing kids, the one thing that needed to be evident is that the family loves each other and that we as a viewer become protective of them and don't want anything bad to happen to them.

Unfortunately, as a viewer, you can only feel bored.

BAGMAN Movie Plot

The movie begins with a father lying on the floor, foaming at the mouth as he watches his daughter being taken away by a man in a cloak. He folds the girls legs and stuffs her inside a bag, and then zips it up.

We then meet the McKee family. Patrick has been experiencing financial issues, which is why he has to move back to his childhood home. His wife Karina is supportive of his dreams to build inventions. They have a three year old son called Jake who likes to play the recorder really, really loudly.

Patrick talks to Liam about perfecting a machine that will help cut down tree branches effectively, but Liam tells him to stop dreaming about these fantasy inventions and do something else. Patrick is later seen getting frustrated as he works on the computer, and he gets rejected for an extension. With the bills piling up, he isn't in a good place right now. In frustration, he breaks his carving knife and tosses it into the bin.

While he is out one day, Karina is watching Jake but also wants to work. She screams at him for playing the recorder too loudly and confiscates it. Bored, Jake hears a kid calling, and when he follows it into the woods, we catch a glimpse of what is most obviously a wind-up doll.

Karina finally realizes that Jake is not nearby and goes into the woods. She just about gets to him before he is taken.

At night, Karina admits she almost lost Jake, and Patrick comforts her. Later, Patrick hears Jake talk to himself and assumes he has an imaginary friend called Dolly. When he hears weird noises, Patrick takes a baseball bat but sees no one, although he suspects the monster from his childhood.

Suspecting that there is a trespasser, Patrick calls the police who check the entire house but find nothing taken. The police then call Patrick up to the roof, where he finds small wood carved toys. The officer believes that someone may be squatting and tossing toys at the window. Patrick is perplexed because he used to make wooden toys.

He finds that a wood carved owl is in his trash bin, the very one he made and lost when he was a kid.

A flashback shows Patrick and Liam by the caves. Patrick is about to go in when someone comes up behind him and snips a lock of hair.

His father had told him about the Bagman and how he came only to take the good kids. Then he gave Patrick a carving knife to keep at his side always so that the Bagman could never get to him. The reasoning was that if a child kept something he loved beside him, that would act as a deterrent. So for years, the Bagman could not get to Patrick because of the knife, but the minute it broke, the Bagman began to stalk Patrick's family again.

Karina begins to sense danger against her son too and thinks she sees the Bagman stuff her son into a bag and zip him up, but when she gets closer, her son is fine.

Anna, Karina's sister, offers to look after Jake one night so that the couple can get a break.

But the Bagman is up to his shenanigans again. The lights flicker and go off, and Anna is attacked by an unseen intruder. The doorman manages to intervene, and Jake is saved.

Later, the police officer shows Patrick that Anna received the same marks on her face as the father from the first scene whose daughter had vanished.

Patrick is now on Bagman alert.

BAGMAN Ending Explained

At night, Patrick and Karina are sleeping next to Anna at her home. Karina goes off to sleep, but as Patrick checks the baby monitor, he hears a sound.

Now, considering they were all expecting Bagman to attack them again and kidnap Jake, couldn't they have kept Jake close to them for one night? Instead of the three adults sleeping on one bed, they could have easily dragged Jake's bed closer to them rather than putting him in a room further away.

Anyway, Patrick heads to Jake's room and sees the Bagman scurry away. Certain that his son has been kidnapped, he follows him all the way to the Bagman's lair.

Once there, he sees the bag, opens it up, and finds a doll with a recording of Jake's voice.

Patrick realizes to his horror that his son was never the target. The Bagman may or may not have taken Jake's lock of hair during the attack, but he had taken Patrick's, and once he marks someone, he has to get them no matter what.

Patrick finds the recorder the Bagman had stolen and manages to throw it out of the cave before the Bagman grabs him.

Now paralysed, Patrick is stuffed into the bag and zipped up.

On the other side, Karina runs to check on Jake and finds him standing on his bed. He is okay. She understands that Patrick has been taken.

The police are called, and they find the entrance to the lair, but of course, no one else. Karina picks up the recorder and realizes that Patrick must have thrown this out to save Jake.

She returns it to Jake and tells him that he will have to keep it with him for the rest of his life.

The movie ends.

My Take On The Movie

Patrick found a remarkable way to run away from his pile of bills, but will his family now have to pay for everything?

Will Jake hold onto the recorder forever or toss it once he grows up and is teased for carrying around a toy?

Is the Bagman really coming for Jake?

The movie could have been so much better, but the lore behind Bagman is hardly explored properly, which is why you never really feel tense or fear the entity when he comes up on screen.

Patrick and Karina hardly seem bothered for their son, considering they keep him several rooms away when there is a threat of Bagman looming. It's as if they want him to be taken.

The movie needed better chemistry among cast mates and definitely a tighter story with Bagman as a central character rather than a man in a robe just grinning and scurrying away.

Disappointing.

Scare Scale: 2/5