The Boogeyman (2023)

Score: 3.5 / 5

If you know the Stephen King short story on which this movie is based, you know this screenplay - by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods of A Quiet Place and 65 -- is already a strong work of imaginative horror. The story, though a bit chilling, is also annoyingly contrived and ends with a terribly cheesy gimmick. It is made up of a conversation between a bereaved man and his therapist, and that's all that happens. That scene basically becomes an early inciting incident in the new adaptation of The Boogeyman, released last week in cinemas, which is exactly where you should go see it. Feeding off both nostalgia for haunted house-type movies of the mid-aughts as well as so-called "elevated horror" of the late teens and now, it couches its plot of heavy tropes and jump scares in an earnest attempt to explore the process of grief and how to let go of it. Think Lights Out meets The Babadook and you're in exactly the right headspace.

Which is to say, effectively, that while The Boogeyman is by no means original, I thoroughly enjoyed it as B-level horror that wears its inspiration proudly on its sleeve. It's the sort of reliable popcorn chomper perfect for a date night or a spooky evening with friends or (older) kids. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking the road well traveled as long as you do it in style, which is why seeing it in a large dark auditorium works best.

Rob Savage has style. The director's previous outings included found-footage/screenlife films Host and Dashcam, which are far removed aesthetically from his work here. Here, his approach is deliberate and languid, forcing us to focus on the neo-Gothic beauty of his visuals, which mostly include very dark rooms and long shadows. He populates this film with plentiful jump scares, here more earned and more satisfying than their, well, jumpy nature in found footage flicks. The difference is that his earlier films were inventive, provocative, and timely. The Boogeyman, had it been released a decade ago, would probably have gone down as a classic, in the days when Insidious and The Conjuring ruled the genre, but now it's more quaint than anything.

Which is not to say it's not effective; Savage is still really good at what he does. The story, in brief, concerns therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina) and his two daughters Sadie and Sawyer (Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair) who are still reeling from the sudden accidental death of their wife and mother. The chemistry between the family members is really lovely, and the time this film takes in showcasing their relationship wonderfully raises the stakes for what follows. Sawyer is plagued by nightmares while Sadie can't quite connect with anyone at school. Will is visited by an unhinged man, Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian doing that creepy thing he does best), hoping to become a patient; Lester says his three children have died and that the evil spirit who killed them is now attached to him. Will calls the police while Lester, despairing, kills himself in the Harper house. Suddenly inexplicable, terrifying things start going bump in the night.

For some time now, the term "elevated horror" has been thrown around in reference to slow-burner horror dramas that deal with mental illness and thematic intangibles like grief, depression, codependency, etc. I resent that label, but this isn't the time or place for my manifesto! Anyone familiar with The Babadook or Smile or The Night House will be right at home in this film, dealing as it does with grief and healing, though The Boogeyman is much more straightforward in its literalization of the monster in question. The beautiful house that serves as primary setting here is starkly bleak, crawling with thick shadows even in the middle of a sunny afternoon. The children begin to notice a black moldy substance growing throughout the hallways, an annoying cliché that felt ripped from other films -- notably Mama -- which is the kind of trope that works best in face-value haunting movies, not ones trying to bridge the gap between emotional/psychological realism and supernatural horror.

What works much better is the monster itself, a nightmarish creature seen mostly in silhouette or shadow, like the best monsters of the genre. Sadie and Sawyer just want to find peace amidst their bereavement, and the monster's ever-present shenanigans provide only the opposite. It creeps around the house aggressively, popping up all over the place, unfurling its skeletal limbs and leering from darkened closets with glowing yellowish eyes. There's nothing novel about the way it scuttles under a bed, slams doors open and shut, or rises from impossible nooks of the upstairs hallway, but Savage and his cinematographer nail each moment, milking them for every terrifying beat. His use of negative space isn't as polished as the works of, say, James Wan, but it offers a lot for anyone who may be frustrated with what I'd call real elevated horror (exemplified in The Blair Witch Project or Skinamarink, but again, this is a conversation for another time!). And whoever thought of the use of the lit moon ball (lamp?) Sawyer sleeps with should be given some kind of Oscar for featured props, because it's fabulous.

It's the kind of horror film that works best when you don't think too much about it. The number of times someone in the cinema muttered "just turn on the damn lights already" reached a laughable height, to say nothing of the lacking mythology or gaping holes in logic (cell phone flashlights, anyone? And what about how the monster can apparently just blow out entire hallways filled with candles?). Better writing in that regard would have made the monster's terror linger long after the credits roll. As it is, the only chills that remain are our considerations of how grief manifests, and the lengths to which we can go to either embrace, control, deny, or grow from that grief. Sure, that's probably a better aim anyway, but couldn't the ride to that end have been a bit smarter?