The Boogeyman Reviews

In his first Stephen King adaptation, director Rob Savage (Host, Dashcam) uses King's short horror story "The Boogeyman" as a springboard for a deeper exploration of themes such as grief, parenthood, and the devastating effects of bottling up negative emotions. Unfortunately, this admirable attempt at using horror as a psychological case study tool often feels forced and disingenuous.Much of the story revolves around Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher). After losing her mother to a fatal accident, she returns to school only to become the victim of borderline cartoonish bullying. Her woes increase when her father William (Chris Messina) takes on an unexpected therapy patient named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), who tells William of his children's deaths at the hands of a mysterious boogeyman. Soon after, Sadie finds her mother's art studio ruined, with Lester's body hanging in the closet.When Lester's death unleashes the boogeyman on Sadie and her younger sister, Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), several parallels between the creature and the sister's grief become immediately apparent. Lester tells William early on that the boogeyman is "the thing that comes for your kids when you're not paying attention." Not only are the sisters typically attacked while physically alone, but also during times when William's refusal to process his own grief makes him unavailable to let them voice theirs.This notion of grief as a creature that strikes when its victims are left alone in the darkness feels worthy of exploration, but the film never gets there as effectively as it could. While the opening scenes set the tone for a tense and atmospheric experience, the film soon gives way to lazy jump scares. The worst are those that use drastic volume changes to make the viewer jump when nothing truly frightening has happened, likely a tool used by the sound designer to make up for the film's horrendous editing and digital effects. These drawbacks make it nearly impossible to get a good view of the creature, so the film relies on nothing but sheer noise to pick up the slack.To be fair, Savage does make some attempts at building atmosphere and theme throughout the film. Red lights, closing doors, and shadows lurking beyond the door crack are all common leitmotifs throughout the film. The problem is that Savage never really diversifies the presentation of each image, so the audience is left feeling as if they've seen the same repetitive imagery several times without variation.In addition to these flaws, which would spell disaster for any horror movie, the story itself feels lacking. King's original story hardly accounts for one scene of the movie, forcing Savage to work with largely new material that tries its best to ape King's style without ever really pulling it off. The most excruciating example is the bullying subplot. King always writes bullies as borderline sociopaths, but a scene in which Sadie's classmates laugh at the ruin of her deceased mother's dress feels so over the top that the audience is more likely to roll their eyes than to ache with empathy.The film also insults its audience. Despite the clear grief parallels, Lester's wife Rita (Marin Ireland) bluntly explains to Sadie halfway through that the creature targets those who feel alone. She makes no attempt at explaining how she came by this information, simply leaving the viewer to take her word for it. Not long after, a predictable and trope-ridden ending deprives the film of all the thematic value it's attempted to build up to that point.The Boogeyman provides an experience worth watching for those who enjoy symbolism and emotional exploration in their horror films. For true horror fans and general moviegoers, however, the film's reliance on tired horror tropes and surface-level storytelling will result in a largely forgettable narrative with little to no emotional impact.