Review: The Boogeyman

Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

When I was young, Stephen King's "The Boogeyman" short story (included in the "Night Shift" collection) creeped me out, despite its culmination not exactly sticking the landing. Much as the short story "The Raft" (adapted into a creepy segment in 1987's "Creepshow 2") left me feeling uneasy about what I can't see below the water's surface, "The Boogeyman" made me uncomfortable at that time about closet doors being left open.

There have long been rumors that the short story would be adapted into a film, but what's curious about Rob Savage's translation from page to screen is not only the fact that the film bears little resemblance to the short story (no problem there as I judge any film on its merits and what's on the screen, rather than based on what's missing), but also how generic it feels. "The Boogeyman" feels like a throwback to the jump-scare heavy type of PG-13 horror movie that was churned out regularly about a decade ago. 

The film opens with a piece of the action from King's story. A man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) visits a psychiatrist named Will Harper (Chris Messina) and tells his tale of woe - after his newborn died of natural causes, a creature referred to as "the boogeyman" latched onto his family's grief and killed his two other children. The town blames Billings and thinks he was behind the killings, although he wasn't charged in them.

During the session, Harper goes to place a call that he believes a dangerous man is in his home, giving Billings time to go and hang himself in an empty room in the house. Shortly thereafter, Harper and his two daughters - sullen teen Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and younger Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) - begin to see and hear strange things around the house. Perhaps, the boogeyman has latched onto the grief of this family, which lost its matriarch a short time before to a car accident.

"The Boogeyman" follows all of the beats you'd expect of a supernatural tale of this kind - the line between reality and fantasy gets blurred, the sinister being first makes bumps in the night to freak the characters out before increasingly becoming more aggressive, nobody believes Sawyer and Sadie, and then the appearance of a figure connected to a previous boogeyman-related tragedy pops up to provide some advice. You know the routine, and "The Boogeyman" sticks to it.

There are a few jump scares that are a little creepy, but I've long felt that this is a cheap horror movie tactic - much preferring movies that build dread and scares based on mood, tone, and atmosphere - and "The Boogeyman" traffics in them. The picture also features teenagers acting casually cruel - in this case to Sadie over the loss of her mother - which is another favorite trope of these types of movies, although the denouement involving those characters isn't as satisfying as cliches might dictate.

Stephen King movies tend to fall in several categories - the classics ("The Shining," "Carrie," "Stand By Me"), the solid ("The Dead Zone," the first half of "It" and "Misery"), the strange ("Maximum Overdrive") and the disasters, of which there are really too many to name. 

"The Boogeyman" falls into the final category - the mostly bland, which also includes such entries as the remakes of "Pet Semetary" and "Firestarter." It's hard to fathom that this film was borne out of the short story that gave me such a genuine case of the willies when I was young.