The Boogeyman (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) has its work cut out for it: Monster movie, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night premise, based on a Stephen King story. Sounds like a whole bunch of horror films that already exist, doesn’t it? This one’s a King deep cut, a 1973 short story about a creature that emerges from closets and kills children. Rob Savage (Dashcam) directs, with Yellowjackets star Sophie Thatcher holding down the fort-plot, playing a teenager caught between the trauma of her mother’s death and her grieving father and younger sister – and hopefully not caught in the teeth of the whatever-it-is that’s stalking all of them.
The Gist: At first, you’ll wonder if you’re watching a live-action Monsters Inc. remake: A little girl sleeps in bed. Something lurks in the closet. She cries, terrified. But it’s soon clear this ain’t no Mike Wazowski. We hear an eerie voice purporting to be the kid’s father, and then a splat, and then blood splatters on the wall. Was it her father? Or something else? My nickel’s on something else, because if the Boogeyman is just a dude, what kind of horror movie would this be? (Answer: probably a serial killer thriller.) CUT TO: daytime, the Harper family residence. Sadie (Thatcher) mopes. She walks… very… slowly… through a room – this movie is full of scenes in which she walks… very… slowly… through a room – where she pulls a dress from a closet and smells it. It was her mother’s. She died a month prior. Car accident. Sadie decides to wear the dress to school for her first day back after the tragedy.
Sadie’s father, Will (Chris Messina), works at home; he has a dedicated office where he sees his talk-therapy patients. She has a younger sister, Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), who’s eight. It’s hard to draw a bead on this house they live in – all sorts of shit is going to happen there, all sorts of weird and noisy shit, and people in other rooms aren’t going to notice or acknowledge any of it, because otherwise, the movie might not be as scary. Must be a pretty big house? Soundproof walls, maybe? Or are Dad’s hearing aids on the fritz? Anyway. Sadie goes back to school and has awkward interactions with friends, some of whom are more insensitive than others. Will wraps up with one patient when another knocks on the door, unscheduled. The guy’s name is Lester (David Dastmalchian), and he seems deeply troubled. Will plays it cool. Lester’s nonverbals are, well, alarming. His verbals are even more alarming – something borderline incomprehensible about his three dead children and how people think he did it. When Will sneaks away to call for help, Lester makes his way upstairs and there’s some thumping and odd noises – this movie is full of thumping and odd noises – and before you know it, Sadie opens a closet to find Lester’s noosed corpse.
That night, little Sawyer tries to doze off, but that’s difficult when something is scampering from the closet to the bed. She peers beneath and whatever it is in the dimness – this movie is full of dimness – appears to have slashy claws and slashy teeth and eyeballs that cut through the dark. Yes, this is a jump scare, which is your cue to grab your boyfriend or girlfriend’s hand and squeeze. Sadie and Will are skeptical of Sawyer’s claims of seeing a monster, as they should be. But we saw it, or something that might be it; let’s just call it “the boogeyman” (see “memorable dialogue” below), who keeps coming out at night because light keeps it away, and therefore all the characters never, ever flip the lightswitch on – this movie is full of characters who never, ever flip the lightswitch on. Anyway, the kids are going through some shit. Sadie tries to talk to her dad about her dead-mom-related feelings and he nervously shakes it off and essentially says, hey, tell it to your shrink. Irony! Then again, Dad’s going through some shit, too. I think the monster is drawn to this type of shit, or is a manifestation of the shit, although I think that gives the movie too much credit, because I’m pretty sure it’s not trying to say anything – this movie is full of shit!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Boogeyman is a smeared fifth-generation mimeograph of The Babadook.
Performance Worth Watching: Let’s just say Dastmalchian has pretty much cornered the market on disturbed, sunken-eyed weirdos.
Memorable Dialogue: You will not be shocked to learn that there’s a crazy-lady character in this movie who utters the immortal words: “They call it” – pause for dramatic effect – “the boogeyman.”
Sex and Skin: This movie is not full of any of this stuff. To be precise, it has none of it.
Our Take: I’ll give The Boogeyman this – its jump scares are pretty effective, the result of Savage concocting the right atmospheric conditions to exploit primal childhood fears. Beyond that, it’s the usual Psych 101 blahblahblah about trauma, surrounded by rudimentary plotting, sloppy-shifty “rules” dictating the monster’s manifestation and an infuriating disregard for logic. The crazy lady tells Sadie that the creature avoids light, and yet she never bothers to find a lightswitch. Ever. This movie would have you believe the power grid exploded, or was devoured by a sperm whale. If you yell TURN ON A GODDAMN LIGHT every time she should turn on a goddamn light, your vocal cords will burst like overcooked sausages.
Savage prefers to be creative with his visual conceits, even if it means driving his audience nuts – his use of cigarette lighters, Christmas lights and ambient lighting from a video game on a TV shows his preference for nifty-looking contrivance over coherence. He leans heavily on haunted-house tropes –e.g., long slow stares into blackness looking for the skinamarink or whatever, or reaching… slowly… for… a… doorknob – and throws in an It Was Only A Dream rug-pull to make the whole endeavor even more maddening. At this point, all of Stephen King’s major works have been adapted and exploited, and we’ve seen vast swaths of fodder spawning from his minor work – which leaves us with less-than-minor fodder ripe for annoyingly half-assed creepfests like The Boogeyman.
Our Call: It’s just math: A couple of creepy moments can’t compensate for dozens of irritating, repetitive cliches. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.