By RICHELLE CHARKOT
Starring Peter Falls, Michelle Ortiz and Robbie Arnett
Directed by Oliver Bernsen
Written by Henry Bernsen
Choxiee
BAGWORM‘s “hero” is Carroll (Peter Falls), a hammer salesman and the poster boy for the male loneliness epidemic. He is beyond compare ~ sexually frustrated and living in an indefinable level of squalor. After yet another unsuccessful date and yet another unsuccessful business outing, he returns to his ramshackle home and soon enters a new level of peril because he has just stepped on a rusty nail. As the world around him becomes more and more hostile and hallucinogenic, he has to contend with the fact that perhaps he is dying of tetanus.
Filmmakers Oliver and Henry Bernsen (alongside brother Angus, who is the art director) have created a truly impressive first feature in BAGWORM. The film manages to straddle a line of edginess, humour, meanness and levity that could only be handled by a team that understands the vision completely. The film strikes an excellent tonal moment in the opening sequence in which Carroll can’t help but expose his hypocritical world views by being argumentative, self-righteous and frankly weird towards his date. Yet, as he unleashes his diatribe, the camera drifts away from him as though to assure us that what he’s saying doesn’t actually carry any weight, subtly informing the audience that this man is his own little creature and not someone who’s meant to be necessarily relatable. Elements of the film, such as the incredible makeup and special effects that become almost kaleidoscopic as Carroll’s sickness takes hold, seem to form in real time. The set decoration of Carroll’s disgusting apartment allows this universe to feel a bit otherworldly. The result is a healthy distance from the character that feels like looking at a weird bug that’s missing a leg (or two) under a microscope.
Falls is absolutely a highlight. He makes Carroll seem palpably bitter and angry towards a world that he thinks has no place for him. Almost more crucially, he finds the space in which this character feels very obviously desperate for company, but not in a way that suggests a heap of empathy. We know why Carroll has no friends; he sucks.
BAGWORM is nothing if not a unique vision. It seems insane to call a movie like this “palatable,” but its biggest success is how it restrains itself from being just a run-of-the-mill gross-out horror comedy. The result is something far more elevated and interesting – a character study of a man living alone in a house that should be condemned six times over. BAGWORM manages to be very funny without being trite. It’s a window into what happens when a person is so overcome with animosity that they have nothing else left.
