‘There’s something in my room…’
Despite being an old, old man, I have vivid memories of waking up in the middle of the night as a kid and feeling terrified of the darkness. I once became convinced that some dirty laundry draped over a swivel chair was a head impaled on a stick. I remember lying in bed staring at that grisly silhouette for what felt like hours. Utterly frozen with fear. I mention it here because Rob Savage’s Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman does a great job of capturing that feeling, particularly in the earlier scenes, the problem is that Skinamarink does it much better. This will become a running theme…
Reeling from the death of their mother, the Harper family appear loving and unified on the surface, but in reality, they are fractured and alone. Patriatch Will (Chris Messina) throws himself into his work as a therapist, at the expense of the relationship with his daughters Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair). Sadie is isolated from her friends and not ready to let go of her mother’s memory whilst Sawyer has retreated into a fantasy world of monsters and demons. When a troubled alleged child murderer (David Dastmalchian) wanders in off the street and confronts Will (in a scene very reminiscent of the opening of The Sixth Sense) he sets in motion a chain of events that will awaken an ancient evil.
Let me begin with the positives. Host director Rob Savage confirms that he is no one-trick pony. I haven’t got around to Dashcam yet, the film that followed Host, but his direction here is assured and compelling. One of my most consistent bugbears in modern cinema is everything being too damn dark. The Boogeyman requires much of the action to be shot in darkness as it’s a central plot point, but Savage’s use of chiaroscuro lighting ensures that the atmosphere and tone never comes at the expense of clarity. It is also wise when employing a CGI monster to keep the thing in the shadows most of the time. The cast is excellent. Messina and Thatcher have done great work recently on Gaslit and Yellowjackets respectively and they make for a convincing father-daughter duo here. Elsewhere, Lyra Blair has already made a name for herself playing a younger incarnation of Princess Leia, no less, in Disney’s mostly excellent Obi-Wan Kenobi series and she is genuinely excellent here. Funny, sassy, vulnerable, frightened… whatever is called for, she delivers in spades.
Now, for the problems. It’s just too derivative. I haven’t read King’s source material but the idea of a curse being passed on to someone else was done much more effectively in 2022’s Smile. As previously mentioned, The Boogeyman doesn’t come close to matching the terrifying intensity of Skinamarink. In the end, this is a competent movie and a pleasingly frightening one, but it isn’t particularly memorable or original. It certainly doesn’t come close to the upper echelon of King adaptations.
The Boogeyman is a perfectly enjoyable supernatural horror movie. It has some great moments. It has some not-so-great moments. Right now though, to really make a splash, a horror film needs to do more than just rehash tired tropes.