The Boogeyman is the adaption of the short novel by Stephen King of the same name. The Boogeyman follows Sadie, her father Will, and her little sister Sawyer as they try to defend themselves from the monstrous boogeyman.
The Boogeyman was a fun watch. The film is very atmospheric and while most of the scares are jumpscares, some got me jumping. I’ll get into it later but the basic theme of the movie is light is safe, darkness is danger. With that, many dark scenes had me and the rest of the crowd on the edge of our seats trying to see if we could make out the monster in the dark. It was very similar to Lights Out in that regard. Both took advantage of the darkness and added some variety to how they lit up their paths.
Speaking of the monster, The Boogeyman had an exciting and scary design. For whatever reason, a lot of horror movies have used the tall woman monster model (like in Smile and Barbarian) recently. The Boogeyman had a wolf-spider hybrid design that the movie was not afraid to show off at all. I truly loved how much screen time it got and how often we got to see it in its full glory.
But as good as The Boogeyman looked, the story is as basic as it can be. Immediately we find out that there is a dead parent and that dealing with grief will be our major theme. That grief is also apparently why they have been targeted, which has been done enough times. After that, the movie feels like its storyboard was just a checklist:
- Introduce the family in grieving. Check
- The remaining parent is a psychologist but refuses to believe their children until the very end. Check
- The youngest child is the first person to interact with the entity. Check
- The oldest child believes them and goes on a mission to find out as much as they can, getting attacked along the way. Check
- The family is attacked but is saved by something relevant to the dead parent. Check
- Bonus points if there is someone who has already dealt with the entity that the oldest goes and finds. Check
It was almost painful how formulaic it was when it had the potential to be better. Also, I will always prefer my horror movies to be rated R. I don’t think the PG-13 rating hampers the movie at all, but I believe an R rating would’ve allowed the writers and director to get bolder with it.
The performances in The Boogeyman were all solid, with some better than others. Maybe I’m being a bit nitpicky here but Chris Messina (Will) didn’t stand out as much as his costars Sophie Thatcher (Sadie) and Vivien Lyra Blair (Sawyer). Blair especially stood out as I believed for every second that she was terrified the entire time. Even David Dastmalchian in his limited screen time packed in some emotion to his performance.
Final Thoughts
I think The Boogeyman is a solid horror movie. It didn’t take many risks but it still provided a lot of good scares and a tense atmosphere. The Boogeyman itself looked great and scary and there are solid performances all around that made this movie entertaining to watch.
