The Boogeyman is a horror movie about the Harper family grieving the loss of their mother/wife when Will, the father a therapist, has a walk-in that brings with him a deadly supernatural creature. His two children Sadie and Sawyer bear the brunt of the entities attacks and are the defacto leads.
The cast is full of talent, it's great to see Sophie Thatcher get a bit more screen time than her breakout Yellowjackets and Vivien Lyra Blair show a lot more range in her follow up to her precocious turn in Obi-Wan Kenobi. And, as ever, it is great to see Chris Messina utilize his understated but unshakeable realism and David Dastmalchian with his innate otherworldlyism. Not to mention a brief appearance by excellent character actor Marin Ireland. And yet. The script and direction fall firmly in the by-the-numbers jump-scare flick camp that would be more at home in the Conjuring universe than something that is clearly trying to pull from The Babadook by tying grief and trauma to the titular monster.
The production design feels very workman like, there are scenes and sequences where light and shadow are played with but it at times defies narrative logic(ie every single lightbulb in the house is filament, no one ever seems to have their cellphones yet it is supposedly present day) and so is clearly contrived undercutting the impact. The logic of the creature is underbaked, the emotional journey of the characters takes a back-back seat so feels like abbreviation, again lessoning the stakes. A lot is sacrificed for budget(understandable) but also in order to manufacture momentum and jump scares(a glaring error). The result feels like something specifically engineered to be thrown away on a streaming service(it was originally set to go to Hulu but got a theatrical release after positive test screenings). It also contains one of the most excruciating and overused genre tropes- individuals involved with the supernatural denying the existence of such for the bulk of the narrative until(or even after) they are directly injured by it.
Slick-ish looking, rote plotting, an excellent cast come together to make something passable.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Stream It.
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