Jason Voorhees, Ghostface and Freddy Krueger are some of the most well-known horror cinema characters but is there any other famous bringer of doom than The Boogeyman? Kids under quilts tremble at the thought of that fairytale-like monster hiding in wardrobes or sliding below beds, we all dreaded – or still dread – that Boogie man. Equally, Rob Savage in his role as a director in The Boogeyman has taken the simplest and most universal after-dark horror stories from childhoods and maximized it to his best possible extent with a jumpy albeit formulaic adaptation of Stephen King’s short story about shadow-dwelling demons. In its finest moments, The Boogeyman is god damn spooky and reminder that PG-13 horror can still be frightening when done right even to people who live for horror.
Writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods tap into their genre-leaning scripts for A Quiet Place that follow troubled families fighting bloodthirsty beasts by enlisting co-writer Mark Heyman to examine the shattered Harper family’s struggle against an unsightly evil. Thatcher herself was a yellowjackets standout who acts as eldest daughter Sadie, tying together The Boogeyman along with 10-year-old Vivien Lyra Blair’s teeny-tiny little sister Sawyer (played so excellently). Thatcher and Blair really embody the fear coming out of open closets when eerie figures dash through patches of darkness without ever undercutting the helpless feelings associated with childhood fears. Their therapist dad Will grows salt-and-pepper beard which Chris Messina convincingly wears; unfortunately his imagination cannot accommodate such a real boogey man; neither does Thatcher nor Blair pull back on their boogie man antagonist’s fright tactics scene after scene.
David Dastmalchian makes every moment count as Lester Billings, King’s own saddest character from the original mini-thriller. Similar to Marin Ireland who Sadie eventually approaches in order to get advice from her own resident shot-gun-pumped-up Boogeyman-believer. The Boogeyman is certainly owned by Thatcher and Blair but it also takes all of them to make that barebones campfire story blueprint feel more robust. An unsettling urban legend movie doesn’t rewrite horror history – it’s a delicious slice of home style horrors. There are few inventive bits like Sawyer’s moon orb rolling light source that scores a small victory for this otherwise run-of-the-mill feature designed to scare audiences stiff at night. When this one drops on streaming expect it to be a sleepover superhit.
Savage doesn’t hold back with the jump scares, Mr. Boogeyman’s bread and butter addiction (note). The Boogeyman does PG-13 horror proud, relying upon familiar bedtime-bumps-in-the-night storytelling for a predictable scare-fest which will undoubtedly have people jumping out of seat in cinemas all over America. Continuously lunging out from darkness after its beady eyes gave warning, there’s nothing subversively provocative about a bogeymonster but there are plenty of high-impact fright executions. In scaring literal piss out of Sawyer and Sadie Savage taps into humanity’s collective fear about dark rarely missing an opportunity to have our nerves shredded again as the night falls bringing another round of boogey man related nightmares.
Maybe The Boogeyman is just too reliant on jump scares, even if they’re effective because the story doesn’t go that deep. Savage’s tale traces F. Sandberg’s classic spine-chilling Lights Out – a once upon time exploitation of timeless mythology related to the Boogeyman and that goes deeper in its storyline than Sandberg’s. This is the cleanest way to look at the movie as a haunted attraction where two siblings are scared witless by their menacing brother; on the flipside, it lacks impact when dealing with trauma responses related to their mother’s death. “Trauma” becomes a buzzword, replete with Sadie being treated like a disposable product by shallow high school caricatures and Will Burch’s quietness towards his family members. Righteous scare sequences involving Sawyer playing his PlayStation as a light source or red strobing psychologist’s cube are sandwiched between minimal losses in steam for The Boogeyman.
The fact that It helps that The Boogeyman cannot be categorized as either nimble bug with bent crackles-when-it-crawls appendages or emaciated human being with sunken eyeholes gives this creature an edge over others in terms of quality design. In Harpers’ house, creature design becomes paramount creating an illusory feeling of enormity such that nobody can hear you flee from a boogey attack. At times, The Boogeyman does not run smoothly animation-wise especially when darkness is used by Savage for minimizing imperfect monster closeups.
Afterwards, The Boogeyman earns its special effects praise when children wear flickering Christmas lights as defence against something out there in the night which sounds like one might find it cozy climbing caves inside The Descent or think up about berserkers from A Quiet Place evolving somewhere. However there must be enough left so that whole bodies never appear till much later in order to keep monster madness until later in the film. This ensures a camera-shy creature does not deprive us of full-throttle protections against soul-sucking evil.
Conclusion
The Boogeyman could be marketed much like car salesmen do their mid-range best sellers: tough, reliable, and efficient. “Like a rock,” they would repeat. Once again Rob Savage demonstrates that PG-13 is not an obstacle for filmmakers who want to scare the hell out of the audience with The Boogeyman being the scariest horror movie this year (so far). However, what doesn’t kill always makes you stronger; thus, sometimes a familiar trapped-with-a-monster setup can be its worst enemy as it wanders in between horrifying visuals. Fortunately, lots of nightmare fuel makes up for an otherwise standard storytelling that doesn’t go any further than clichéd outlines for slightly better families-versus-demons showstoppers. The Boogeyman is just another average creepshow designed to appeal to the masses and gets its job done because scary is as scary does at the end of it all.
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