Baghead (2008)--2/5

"Baghead" would be like "Scream" if the characters knew anything about horror films. That's OK; they don't know much about anything because they're mumblecore players--those shiftless, whiny do-nothings from countless other sub-$1,000 films. As I may have said before, these actors (including mumblecore's starlet (mostly because she's often clothes-less) Greta Gerwig) are acceptable in stories about hipsters hooking up in crummy Williamsburg apartments. "Baghead" asks them to do too much. It's a semi-sly--and semi-stupid--dig at their infirmities.

Two guys and two girls travel to a remote cabin to try to make a movie. They've been inspired by an awful looking cheapie and think they can do better. It's a struggle to even think of a premise for a film. They mostly drink and try to have sex with each other, eventually hitting on a simple horror story of a killer with a bag on his head. Before they've even filmed anything, they're menaced by a fifth person with a bag on his head. In "Scream" fashion, of course, it's a while before we see all four of them at the same time with the real Baghead.

Their phones don't work and their only ride out has been sabotaged. They decide to walk the eleven miles to the road in the middle of the day and without food or drink. Again, "Baghead" is playing on how pathetic my generation appears to be, according to movies like "Mutual Appreciation" and "Hannah Takes the Stairs." The meta-critiques within "Baghead" can inevitably be used on the film as a whole--lazy, rushed, stretched painfully thin, etc.