Crew
Director – Colm McCarthy, Screenplay – John Hulme, Producers – Marty Bowen, John Fischer, Wyck Godfrey & Isaac Klausner, Photography – Nick Remy Matthews, Music – Timothy Williams, Visual Effects Supervisors – Sebastian Baker & John Lockwood, Visual Effects – Automatik & Tempest FX (Supervisor – Marc Steinberg), Special Effects Supervisor – Yovko Dogandjiiski, Makeup Effects – Creatures Inc. Limited (Supervisor/Designer – Conor O’Sullivan), Production Design – Chris Richmond. Production Company – Temple Hill.
Cast
Sam Claflin (Patrick McKee), Antonia Thomas (Karina McKee), Carell Rhoden (Jake McKee), Adelle Leonce (Anna Logan), William Hope (Chief Isaacs), Steven Cree (Liam McKee), Peter McDonald (Jake McKee Sr.), Will Davis (Bagman), Matthew Stagg (Young Patrick McKee), Jordan Gubian (Young Liam McKee)
Plot
Patrick McKee is married to Karina and with a young son Jake. All of a sudden Patrick becomes terrified about the boogeyman known as the Bagman that his father warned him about. The Bagman lived in a nearby abandoned mine and would emerge to snatch good children and drag them away in the leather bag it carries over its shoulder. Patrick remembers back to a time in his childhood where he and his brother ventured to the entrance of the mine. The Bagman now begins to reappear to him.
Scottish-born director Colm McCarthy emerged out of working in British tv in the early 2000s. He has credits on an impressive range of episodic shows including Spooks (2002-11), Doctor Who (2005- ), The Tudors (2007-10), Sherlock (2010- ), Black Mirror (2011- ) and Peaky Blinders (2013-22), among others. McCarthy made his feature film debut with Outcast (2010), a striking work set amongst Celtic folk magic, and went on to make The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), one of the most original treatments of the zombie film in the 2000s. Bagman was McCarthy’s third film, made with the backing of Temple Hill, the US company behind Twilight (2008), The Maze Runner (2014) and assorted sequels to either, among others.
Bagman – not to be confused Baghead (2023), which released eight months earlier – is a Boogeymen film. There have been assorted efforts in this area from fictional figures like Freddy Krueger, Candyman and the Jeepers Creepers films to The Babadook (2014), not to mention the urban legend of the Slender Man.
I had great hopes for a new film from Colm McCarthy before sitting down to watch but became increasingly disappointed with Bagman. Colm McCarthy has a strong independent voice but with Bagman he largely subsumes this to make a mainstream formula film. The sinking disenchantment is just what a dull and formulaic film that Bagman ends up being.
The Bagman boogeyman is an utterly generic menace. The screenplay served up is one where you can predict every move that occurs and in which there are zero surprises or twists on anything that happens. There is precious little of the film where Colm McCarthy seems to be doing anything more than delivering a workmanlike job. There is nothing spooky, nothing stylish. There is occasional menace exuded watching the Bagman zip bodies up inside its bag but the figure has very little threat beyond simply being the threat that the central character fears.
Trailer here