‘Bag Of Lies’ Review – Suitably Creepy Tale Of Undying Love

Bag of Lies is a new horror film that makes the audience question how far would they go in the name of love if their partner’s life were slipping away. By tapping into a very human dilemma, director David Andrew James (working from a script he co-wrote with Nick Laughlin and Joe Zappa), already has the viewer in his chokehold. Loss is a universal emotion and it’s this component of Bag of Lies that allows some of its suitably eerie supernatural leanings to actually work. Even though the movie goes on a little long, it’s ominous and creepy enough to hold your attention as it begins to make you question how much of it is actually real.

Matt (Patrick Taft) is a man who is desperate to save his dying wife Claire (Brandi Botkin) from succumbing to cancer. She has decided to stop chemotherapy and all other treatments because they only make her feel worse and haven’t done much to improve her diagnosis. As all hope appears lost, Matt hears of an ancient relic that could help their circumstances. This is when Matt decides to go all in on the dark magic and use “The Bag.”

Using “The Bag” comes with its own consequences. There are a series of rituals and strict rules that must be followed for it to work: It must be isolated, locked in a room, and not seen, touched, or spoken to. If you’ve seen something like Pet Sematary, another supernatural tale featuring characters desperate to keep their loved ones alive, this is bound to do more bad than good. Matt’s very sanity is beginning to unravel as his wife gets better, indicating that her improved health comes with a very terrifying price.

The main theme of Bag of Lies centers around all the things we do for love. If it meant saving the person who means the world to you, would you make a deal with the devil to keep them alive? Most would would look into any route to ensure that their loved ones could remain among the living and that’s what gives the film a much stronger emotional core than anticipated. However, not only does it look at this notion as merely saving a life, but it also sees the side of it that is personally selfish. At a certain point, are you keeping this person around for their well-being or your own? If anything, the film makes it clear that love can be more selfish than we realize and that a true sign of love is knowing when to let someone go.

The relationship between Matt and Claire is presented in a very interesting way. The chemistry is there between Taft and Botkin but they don’t have as much time on screen together as you would think given the film’s premise. Much of what we feel about the situation is through Matt, whose grief as a husband taking care of a terminally ill spouse is mostly without words. This could be viewed as a detriment but Taft can convey many emotions without saying a word and he projects his grief to the audience in a palpable way. The viewer gets why Matt is doing what he’s doing and as his psyche begins to deteriorate as the film moves along, the audience questions if it’s Matt’s guilt for toying with the natural way of things or if “The Bag” that is locked away is working its dark magic. This is Matt’s story, however, it maybe could’ve benefitted from presenting the story a bit more from Claire’s side as well, especially since her making peace with her fate is its own interesting plot point.

Working in the film’s favor is that it doesn’t waste time on the history of the ancient relic in question. There are rules and when they are broken, there are consequences. That is all the audience needs to know and thankfully the movie isn’t bogged down by needless exposition. Even though much of it sounds thin, it’s effective enough because of its simplicity. It also helps that the film doesn’t utilize cheap, low-rent CGI effects and chooses to display mostly practical horror visuals that are executed well given the film’s limited budget. Matt’s circumstances become increasingly disturbing as the movie moves along from him seeing corporeal people manifest right in front of him to him hearing phantom screams in the dead of night. There are jump scares but they’re earned because David Andrew James creates a suitably creepy atmosphere as Matt’s psyche chips away.

If there are any issues with the film, it’s that the script has moments where it comes off a bit muddled. The first half of the film holds together coherently with a few unsettling moments mixed in to make up for its more slow-burn nature but things do go a bit off the rails once the horror elements become more prevalent. The story becomes a bit more manic and that’s when aspects of the film become familiar in terms of tone and execution. The movie is at its best when it’s emotionally focused, whether it’s on Matt’s undying love for his wife, or his growing sense of isolation. The hallucinations that he experiences are very effective and at times unsettling but their escalation can come off as incoherent. They become a series of scary moments but not necessarily scary moments that add up to much. That being said, the film falls into a clever space of making the audience not completely trust what Matt is seeing or hearing, and that allows for the rug to be pulled out from under them on more than a few occasions.

Bag of Lies succeeds by presenting personal loss through a deepening lens of supernatural horror. This is a surprisingly touching story about a couple whose destiny is to have their lives together cut short. That’s a palpable and relatable emotion and that’s what pulls the viewer in as the creepiness builds around them to create a suitably eerie and ominous experience.

Bag of Lies is currently playing in select theaters and is now available on Digital and VOD platforms courtesy of DREAD,