Horror fans have been feasting at the box office lately, with plenty of high-profile projects being released to critical and financial success. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of duds being put out by the major studios, andThe Boogeymanis no exception. Though it boasts the name recognition of Stephen King, this generic, by-the-numbers bore doesn’t have even the faintest resemblance to the famed author’s work.
First published in 1973, King’s short story, which ostensibly serves as the basis for the movie, is a classic example of his early work. A man named Lester Billings talks to a psychiatrist, Dr. Harper, detailing his experiences with a malevolent supernatural force that he says took the lives of his three children. Being a short story, the story pans out just long enough to build tension and deliver a twist ending. Aside from one scene in the movie, this part of the story is almost entirely ignored.
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Instead, whatThe Boogeymandelivers is an entirely different story, focused on an entirely different set of characters, none of whom are all that interesting. The therapist is still Dr. Harper (Chris Messina), and Lester Billings (David Dastmalchain) does make a brief appearance, but everything else is invented from whole cloth (though, yes, there is still a monster that hides in the closet).
The doctor, Will, and his two daughters, Sadie and Sawyer (Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair, respectively) are recovering from a tragedy, that being the death of the girls' mother. In the midst of their grief, Lester arrives unannounced to speak with Will at his home office, seemingly bringing the Boogeyman into their lives and setting young Sawyer up as the first target.
The plot is minimal, and not in a way that benefits the rest of the story. There’s very little here to setThe Boogeymanapart from any other generic horror movie thatdoesn’t have the financial heft of Disney behind it. Characters move from one scene to the next with very little narrative drive or development, and even the movie’s titular monster is little more than a bog-standard ghoulie. Right from the opening scene,The Boogeymantries but ultimately fails to raise the stakes to a meaningful level.
WhatThe Boogeymandoes manage to pack in is just aboutevery single horror movie cliché under the sun. A spooky child’s drawing, a slowly opening closet door, mean teenagers locking someone in a room with the monster, the lights that don’t turn on despite repeatedly flipping the switch, “stay in the light,” the list goes on. Even thematically speaking, the trope of using trauma and grief to anchor a horror movie is present, though it serves little purpose to the overall story.There’s been plenty of talk about AI-generated content recently, and it’s easy to imagine that if a machine was prompted to write a supernatural horror movie, this is exactly what it would spit out. Make no mistake, though, this movie was written by humans: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman, all of whom have delivered much better scripts in the past.
The only real benefit to this movie is the performances from Thatcher and Blair, both of whom oddly enough starred in separate Star Wars projects (Thatcher appeared inBook of Boba Fett,while Blair played a young Leia inObi-Wan Kenobi). Blair does especially well in giving Sawyer plenty of personality without falling into the trap of precociousness. Thatcher fits the bill as a moody teenager who is struggling with the loss of her mother and putting up with the usual high school troubles, but also sells Sadie’s fear in ways that feel genuine.
While he only appears briefly, Dastmalchain also leaves an impression. He enters the movie with a terror that is more world-weary than anything else, and unfortunately leaves the story pretty much right after entering it. Messina’s character, too, often feels like more of an afterthought, despite being one of the central figures in the original short story. As a man who is repressing his feelings, Messina might be doing too good of a job here, coming across fairly flat in many of his scenes.
Director Rob Savage (who did far better and morecreative work in his pandemic horrorHost) doesn’t do anything here to elevate the material. For the most part, it seems like he’s taking a point-and-shoot approach to many of the scenes, and he doesn’t do much to create anything in the way of a memorable setpiece, even reusing the same device of a light-up moon in two different scenes.The Boogeymanwas originally slated for a streaming releasebefore being moved to theatrical, and it shows in the movie’s flat color palette and uninspired visual design. This would have been easy enough to throw on at home, but is definitely not built for the big screen.
The Boogeymanfeels like a product of the past. It has less in common with recent horror hits likeSmileandXthan it does with forgettable mid-2000s releases that came and went without any fanfare. This Boogeyman isn’t even as much fun asthe 2005 movie bearing the same name (minus the “The”). The Stephen King connection feels more like a cash-in on a recognizable figure in horror and less like an earnest adaptation of his work. There have certainly beenbad Stephen King adaptationsin the past, but at least those movies were trying to recreate the man’s stories, rather than using them as a jumping-off point for something entirely different and much worse. Any of those projects would probably be a more enjoyable watch thanThe Boogeyman.
The Boogeymanopens in theaters on June 2nd.
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The Boogeyman
The Boogeyman is a 2023 film directed by Rob Savage and starring Madison Hu, Vivien Lyra Blair, and Sophie Thatcher. The release is based heavily on Stephen King’s short story of the same name. The director intends to warp the story enough to be somewhat different from the 1973 release.
