THE BOOGEYMAN : Tuesday 6th June 2023.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE BOOGEYMAN' at my local multiplex this week and this American supernatural horror film is Directed by Rob Savage whose three previous feature film credits are 'Strings' in 2012, 'Host' in 2020 and 'Dashcam' in 2021. This film is based on the 1973 short story of the same name written by Stephen King and cost US$35M to produce, has so far grossed US$24M and has garnered mixed reviews from critics, having been released in the US and here in Australia last week.

Here then, high school student Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher) and her younger sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) are reeling from the recent death of their mother who died tragically in a car accident. Sawyer suffers from nightmares and seemingly has visions of a monster living in her closet, and Sadie is struggling to adapt back into school life where her friend Bethany (Madison Hu) has joined in with a new group of girls who treat Sadie with disdain, and offer up little sympathy over the recent passing of her mother. Neither of them are getting much support from their father Will (Chris Messina), a therapist who is dealing with his own pain. 

One day, Will is visited at his home therapy office by a man called Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) who asks to speak to him. Lester is insistent and as Will has a spare hour in his diary he reluctantly agrees. He goes on to explain that his three children have died, all killed one by one by an entity that he thinks has now latched onto him. Lester was never accused of the crime of murder, but in the court of public opinion he is guilty of murdering them. Although sympathetic to Lester, a disbelieving Will leaves him alone to call the Police. Lester slips away into the house and when Sadie is alerted to a shuffling sound in her mothers home art studio she goes to investigate, only to find Lester's lifeless body hanging from a coat hook on the back of the door.

Attempting to get their lives back to some sense of normality following the death of Billings, Sadie notices a strange black mould beginning to form above her bed, while Sawyer one night is woken by a mysterious creature that has hidden under her bed. Sawyer tells Sadie, who searches her bedroom but cannot locate the creature and does not believe her sister. The girls later visit their therapist Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton) to talk about their mother's death. Weller uses a red light which flashes intermittently to help Sawyer get over her fear of the dark, but Sawyer observes the creature again when the room is thrust into darkness and the light flashes red and wets herself in fright. In the house, the creature continues to stalk and terrorise Sawyer while Sadie also glimpses it and begins to suspect the strange phenomenon is somehow linked to Lester's apparent suicide.

Sadie listens to her fathers recording of Lester's appointment and goes online to acquaint herself with the Billings family history and learns of their address. Sadie has Bethany drive her out to the Billings' now heavily vandalised and seemingly abandoned house. Inside she comes across Rita (Marin Ireland), Lester's estranged wife, who still lives in the house. Rita identifies the creature as 'The Boogeyman', stating it as the source of her children's deaths. She further tells Sadie that the creature feeds off fear and enjoys toying with its prey and that it can also mimic voices. The only way to ward off the Boogeyman is light. While talking to Sadie, Rita seemingly observes the Boogeyman approaching Sadie from behind. She warns Sadie not to move and to remain perfectly still, as she shoots at it with a shotgun, resulting in a disturbed Sadie fleeing the house.

The black mould continues its spread around the house. Later Sadie is alerted to strange noises coming from her mothers art studio. She gingerly enters in, only for Will to appear carrying a box of his wife's belongings which he was about to discard. Will and Sadie attempt to talk about the death of Sadie's mother with her convincing Will not to clear out the studio. Sadie takes the box down to the basement and begins to go through the contents of it, and other boxes too, writing 'keep' on each box. Whilst there Sadie seemingly encounters the spirit of her mother, directing the flame of an old Zippo lighter. At school, Bethany comforts Sadie following the episode at the Billings house, and decides to organise a girl's night at Sadie's house to cheer her up. While smoking a joint, Sadie almost chokes and runs through to the bathroom where she coughs up a tooth attached to a long piece of strings that Sawyer had lost shortly after the Boogeyman appeared. As a prank, Bethany's friends lock Sadie in the art studio closet, where she comes face to face with the Boogeyman. Banging on the door frantically to be let out, it remains tightly locked shut and then suddenly bursts open. A fight breaks out amongst the girls who all leave Sadie's house, angered by Sadie's reaction. Meanwhile, Sawyer is playing her PlayStation downstairs and is attacked by the creature and thrown into the TV, hospitalising her.

At the hospital, Sadie is comforting Sawyer, while Will is in a private room where they brought his wife to be identified after the car accident. Sadie is contacted by Rita, who believes she has devised a plan to kill the Boogeyman. Sadie arrives at the house where Rita has set up a trap with several shotgun shells and trip wires. She suddenly attacks Sadie, planning to use her as bait for the creature by tying her to exposed wall joists with cable ties. The Boogeyman appears setting off multiple traps and being shot several times. Rita sidles up to the apparent corpse and fires two more rounds into it for good measure. With her back turned to release Sadie, the Boogeyman rises and kills Rita. Sadie escapes falling down the stairs with the Boogeyman in pursuit but she shines a bright light on it and it retreats from whence it came. Sadie flees the house. Will calls her asking where she is, and Sadie realises they're already back home. The Boogeyman attacks Will and Sawyer, dragging them into the house. Sadie arrives and finds a hiding Sawyer, who has wrapped herself in green and red flashing Christmas lights, who says the creature took their father down into the basement.

The sisters go down into the basement with Sadie carrying an ice hockey stick for protection. There they find the creature seemingly feeding off Will. They rescue their father and a chase ensues in the basement. With the help of Sawyer and her mother's spirit, Sadie manages to set the creature on fire, seemingly killing it and destroying the black mould through the house. The three manage to escape the house as the flames take hold, engulfing the entire property. Some time after having moved on from their harrowing experience, Will, Sadie and Sawyer have a group session with Weller. As they leave, Sadie is called back to the office by Weller only to discover she isn't there and the closet door is open. Weller appears and questions Sadie, who looks at Weller suspiciously and shuts the door.

'The Boogeyman' is a reasonably well crafted albeit fairly pedestrian horror film that isn't up there with some of Stephen King's more noteworthy horror movie adaptations including 1976's 'Carrie', 1980's 'The Sining', 1983's 'The Dead Zone', 1990's 'Misery' or 2017's 'It', but it also doesn't lurk down in the depth's of some of the also rans that have peppered our cinema screens in the last forty or so years. There are a handful of jump scares, the lighting adds a sense of foreboding, the atmospherics add up to the feeling of dread and fear, and the performances of Thatcher and Blair especially carry this film firmly on their shoulders. But, the story adds nothing new to the genre that we haven't seen countless times before, and when The Boogeyman is finally revealed in the basement, the monster is nothing short of a rip-off of Ridley Scott's 'Alien'. This film is aimed squarely at a teen audience looking for by the numbers thrills and chills and on that note the film delivers, but for the more experienced long-in-the-tooth movie goer, this is an OK horror offering, but not great.

'The Boogeyman' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-