Connor and Vaughn Gaston’s horror short Bagman brilliantly twists the consequences of wanting a character to check something they really shouldn’t. As the mystery turns to horror, we soon learn that maybe some things are left untouched. A fantastic horror mystery that fills you with dread.
Graduate researcher Nat (Sam Rahmani) takes on the tedious task of monitoring a wildlife camera. One shift, she notices something strange: a black garbage bag has appeared from nowhere in a forest clearing. She sends her senior technician, Doug (Donal Thoms-Cappello), to check out what is in that bag.
Bagman is clever, very clever; our characters become the audience for ten terrifying minutes as they venture out to do the simplest thing. Check what is in a bag; neither they nor the person on the other end of a phone call know that only horror awaits them. A long-standing quirk with anyone who loves horror is that we want our character to both run like hell from a mysterious object and also go ahead and open it up to see what potential horror is inside.
Yet with Connor and Vaughn Gaston in Bagman, we actually see what those consequences are on both the character and the one who eggs that person on. It’s such a simple concept, but here, it is done to absolute perfection. For the first few minutes the tension is amped up so well that you are at the edge of your seat and worst of all, the Gaston’s prove themselves right. We WANT to see what is in that bag now. Why did Doug act the way he did? Do we want Nat to open it? Hell no. But we still want the mystery solved. So, the trap on the audience is firmly set.
When Nat then goes off on that 5-hour drive to find out what has happened to Doug, we are left just to watch the camera, becoming the watcher ourselves. We don’t want Nat anywhere near that bag; we have learned our lesson, but she isn’t on a call with us. She has fallen foul of being on a call with someone with just as much curiosity as she had hours earlier and who knows how that is going to turn out for either of them…
Sam Rahmani is excellent here in Bagman; with her being front and centre for the vast majority of the film, she is given more than you first think to do. From confusion as to just how that bag got in the clearing from seemingly nowhere to a fantastic character moment where she is trying to get this mystery solved, but Doug just will not stop talking about something else. So she gets frustrated, but is doing everything to keep the interaction professional. You buy into Nat’s curiosity that turns into horrific fear as her shift goes from bad to worse. The film hinges on her performance, and she knocks it out of the park.
Equally, Donal Thoms-Cappello does some great work. He is tasked with showing us fear mostly through his voice as he sees what is happening in that clearing and what is in the bag. Yet we only see a frame of him a few seconds at a time. It’s wholly successful, and when he sees what is in the bag, his reaction over the phone is horrifically terrifying. Asking yourself to wake up fills you with absolute dread.
Bagman is a pitch-perfect horror short. You can’t fault it. Even down to using a pixelated zoom to check things on the screen, which makes you lean that little more forward. We are being teased throughout this film, and we never realise it until the finale. A marvellous horror.
★★★★★
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