'Boogeyman' an atmospherically overwrought, suspense-challenged collection of easy scares, moldy cliches
“The Boogeyman” - ★ ★
“The Exorcist” director William Friedkin famously observed that the scariest thing in a horror film is a closed door.
The scariest thing in Rob Savage's “The Boogeyman” - a movie every bit as original as its overused title - is a closet door that opens by itself.
That's not necessarily a compliment.
The titular character in “The Boogeyman” has to be the most incompetent child serial killer in the history of horror films.
He has only one job to do in this atmospherically overwrought, suspense-challenged collection of easy jump-scares and other moldy genre cliches: terrorize and kill the two kids of a well-meaning, but slow-on-the-uptake family therapist dad.
How hard can this be?
Apparently, hard enough to be way beyond the simple skillset of a mysterious, dark entity that invites an intellectual property lawsuit from the makers of the excellent Australian horror tale “The Babadook” for ripping-off their angular, Dr. Seussian creature of the imagination.
“It's the thing that comes for your kids when you're not paying attention!” gasps Lester Billings (a scorching, soulful David Dastmalchian), a distraught dad whose three children died under mysterious circumstances. Apparently, he didn't pay enough attention after the first one died.
He forewarns Dr. Will Harper (Chris Messina) about the evil manifestation about to descend upon Will's family, already rendered vulnerable by the car accident death of the wife/mom.
But, Will actually does pay attention to his two daughters, emotionally wounded Sadie (“Yellowjackets” star Sophie Thatcher) and her cute little sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair). He presses them to get a good breakfast before heading off to school on time. He doesn't begin dropping the parental ball until after his family becomes threatened, which negates this movie's premise that inattentiveness has somehow attracted the entity.
A horror film can't lose by falling back on the universal appeal of the “monster in the closet” or “creature under the bed” conventions, both of which figure prominently in this underwhelming adaptation of a 1973 Stephen King short story, adapted by “A Quiet Place” screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, with Mark Heyman.
Savage employs reliable and easy jump-scary chestnuts well enough for indiscriminating audiences, but they hardly pack the payoff of the clown-under-the-bed setup from Tobe Hooper's superior “Poltergeist.”
After Lester dies in Will's house, an apparent suicide by hanging (wink, wink - we know it's not), Dad sends Sadie to see a grief counselor, Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton) when she becomes convinced that the entity Billings spoke of - rendered in a chilling notebook sketch - has targeted the Harpers.
Little sister Sawyer already knows. The monster has already invaded her bedroom, which, like most of the movie, appears to be extremely dark even though the lights are on, and Sawyer brandishes a nifty visual prop, an illuminated globe.
Meanwhile, Sadie's investigation leads her to the late Lester's creepy house where his even creepier, shotgun-toting widow Rita (Marin Ireland) dwells in perpetual semidarkness, illuminated by a kajillion tealight-sized candles. Does Rita constantly need to replace these tiny candles? Doesn't matter because they fail to protect her against the Boogeyman, who simply blows the candles out as he invades the house. Good thing Rita created those Indiana Jones-like booby traps designed to blow intruders to pieces with shotgun shells.
“I've seen it bleed,” Sadie says of the invading villain. “It can be hurt!”
Wait ... so she's dealing with a physical entity? Not some supernatural force that magically materializes in closets and crawls on the ceiling?
Granted, horror films need not make sense or conform to any rules of the real world. But they must pull us into their alternate realities where we get neither an opportunity nor the time to question the validity of what we see or hear. Savage's movie comes up short on this challenge.
The ultimate Boogeyman movie remains John Carpenter's “Halloween” in which Jamie Lee Curtis asks, “Was it the Boogeyman?” and Donald Pleasance replies, “As a matter of fact, it was.”
If someone asked that question in Savage's instantly forgettable tale, the reply would be, “As a matter of fact, it wasn't. But it was a pretty good 'Babadook' rip-off.”
Starring: Chris Messina, Sophie Thatcher, David Dastmalchian, Vivien Lyra Blair, LisaGay Hamilton, Marin Ireland
Directed by: Rob Savage
Other: A 20th Century Studios theatrical release. Rated PG-13 for teen drug use, language, violence. 98 minutes