'The Boogeyman' Review: You Can Keep this Monster Locked in the Closet
Rob Savage takes a crack at PG-13 horror in The Boogeyman, a relatively tame and predictable horror movie featuring a roster of one-note characters and uneventful jumpscares.
With films like Host and Dascham, horror filmmaker Rob Savage scared audiences through the power of Zoom and an inexplicably insane found footage story that got gnarlier as it went along. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea when it came to 2020 horror films, but he certainly made a name for himself in such a quick amount of time. Now, he’s been plucked by Disney to direct The Boogeyman, an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name. Initially slated to release on Hulu, the movie was bumped to theatres after a positive reception from test screenings (Evil Dead Rise was also bumped to theatres this year after positive test screenings. Audiences love horror!)
Disney was so confident that the film would be a massive theatrical experience that it premiered at CinemaCon during the studio’s panel. As much as I appreciate their confidence and any studio’s embrace of the theatrical experience, particularly for a horror film, The Boogeyman has very little to offer regarding scares and compelling characters.
The movie follows the Harper family, who grapple with the loss of their mother. Father Will Harper (Chris Messina) continues his practice, but has difficulty supporting his children, Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), who has a hard time coping with her mom’s death, and Sawyer (Vivian Lyra Blair), who allegedly sees a creature in the dark. One day, a man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) shows up at Will’s door asking for help on a creature he has been seeing but kills himself shortly after. The creature, dubbed The Boogeyman, begins to stalk Sawyer and Sadie, and a jumpscare fest ensues.
Few PG-13 horror movies have been legitimately entertaining. Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN spiced things up a bit this year, but it was more of a comedy than a straight-up horror flick. The “horror” bits were its weakest part because the PG-13 rating prevented the filmmakers from showing blood and would consistently cut away from any attempt at violence. The Boogeyman thinks it can be scary by focusing on the atmosphere instead of straight-up gore, which is fine if it wasn’t a jumpscare fest. The only element this movie has going for is creating jump scares through The Boogeyman, which the audience barely sees or knows much about. What is The Boogeyman? A creature who feeds on people who are afraid. How can you stop The Boogeyman? It’s unclear, but he doesn’t like light. That’s it. The movie has no genuine tension because the threat is so underdeveloped and is nothing but a jumpscare machine.
What’s scary about an unseen character who yells at the audience? Apart from the slight jump you may have from how loud the sound is in your theater, nothing. I will say that the sound mix is very well done and creates a rather intriguing atmosphere in the cinema. However, it’s still plagued with endless jumpscares, which get tired relatively quickly. There’s so much an audience member can tolerate with jumpscares before it starts to become tedious. Unfortunately, Savage and screenwriters Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman are caught in a loop filled with uneventful jumpscares, drab cinematography, and one-note characters.
It’s bad that you can’t see the creature, so the result isn’t that scary, but it’s even worse when you can’t see anything. Most of the cinematography is murky and dull to look at, with scenes in the dark being far too dark for the human eye to perceive something. There are a couple of confrontations in the dark, and we can see the camera moving but cannot perceive a single thing on the screen. There’s one neat camera trick happening earlier during the movie, but Savage and cinematographer Eli Born don’t use the visual medium to its fullest potential.
Some will argue by stating that The Boogeyman is afraid of light, and that’s true. But there’s a lot you can do in playing around with different light sources, like flashlights (which aren’t even used) and fire. That can make for an interesting (and aesthetically challenging) film for the audience, but it barely does anything with its antagonist and the premise of avoiding light. It’s too dark and has few interesting shot compositions throughout its 99 minutes.
Thankfully, the lead performances from Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, and Vivien Lyra Blair are all terrific, even if they all play one-note characters. Thatcher’s Sadie is consistently sad, Lyra Blair is afraid of monsters, and Messina’s character acts helpless for most of the runtime and, predictably, gaslights their children because he doesn’t believe The Boogeyman exists. They’re plucked straight out of every single bad horror movie cliché and aren’t interesting protagonists to follow. However, you can tell how much the three actors deeply care about the material and try to do their best with a script that does very little for them.
The overall experience of The Boogeyman was disappointing. The movie has so much potential for a visual and aural theatrical experience but fails at crafting something truly memorable. PG-13 horror can absolutely work. Look at the Quiet Place movies as the blue—oh, they hired the Quiet Place writers for this one? Well…they blew it. It happens. Hopefully, their next project will be better.