Movie Review: 'The Boogeyman'

The Boogeyman (2023)

Directed by Rob Savage

Written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman

Starring Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivian Lyra Blair, David Dastmalchian

Release Date June 2nd, 2023

Published June 5th, 2023

As I write this, I saw the new horror film, The Boogeyman, two days ago and I am struggling to remember anything about it. This could, perhaps, be a mental breakdown on my part, but my working theory is that The Boogeyman is such a boring movie that my mind didn't bother to find anything worth remembering about it. There is not a single original moment in the entirety of The Boogeyman. There is not a single memorable sequence that could make this movie worth remembering after you see it. The Boogeyman is so bland and generic it could be retitled as Nightmare Man and re-released to theaters and few people would notice or care.

The Boogeyman stars a lovely young actress named Sophie Thatcher as Sadie Harper. Sadie and her little sister, Sawyer (Vivian Lyra Brown), are grieving the very recent loss of their mother. Chris Messina plays their distant and equally grieving father, Will. Will is terrified of being a single dad to two frightened and traumatized young girls so he throws himself back into his work as a psychiatrist while avoiding any kind of serious conversation with his children, especially Sadie who tries and fails to get him to open up.

The plot kicks in when a deeply haunted and disturbed patient forces his way into Will's office. The patient is Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), a man who is believed by many to have murdered his two children. Billings however, claims that a monster killed his kids. This monster attacks your children while you aren't paying attention. It also feeds on vulnerable children, kids who have, perhaps, suffered a very recent and painful trauma. You can see where this is headed. The curse that this haunted man carries attaches itself to Sadie and Sawyer and it will be up to Sadie to save her sister from this monster that comes to be known as The Boogeyman.

Though it might appear random, the boogeyman as a concept is actually a perfect title for this dopey, run of the mill horror movie. The Boogeyman, in terms of its origin, is basically a vague concept of dread that affects children. Whatever a child might be afraid of is The Boogeyman. No attempt is made by this movie to flesh out this concept. There is little specificity to the evil entity of this version of The Boogeyman. The movie wants to be about how grief manifests as fear in children and how that fear can consume a child if parents aren't attentive to it.

That's a good idea but as executed, it's just a series of jump scares in which dark corners become menacing simply for being dark. A noise is heard, lights go out, monster roars, child screams, lather, rinse, repeat. It's a series of jump scares that coalesce vaguely around the concept of trauma manifesting in a monster, a representation of the fear of death and the grief of loss. These concepts aren't well explored as the film prefers to keep things light by jump scaring audiences in place of actually compelling the audience with good characters and a well told story.

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