Grade: B-
Stephen King’s son Joe Hill came out with a short story called The Black Phone, which was made into my favorite horror movie of 2022. Now, we have The Boogeyman in theaters, based on a short story by the old man himself. I didn’t like it as much. Go figure.
Though I’ve apparently seen some of them before, nobody in the cast rang a bell for me, but there are some effective performances in The Boogeyman. Chris Messina (Air, I Care a Lot, Birds of Prey) stars as Dr. Will Harper – a therapist who works from home; the clients come to him. He has two daughters: teenager Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), and elementary schooler Sawyer (Vivian Lyra Blair). It is just the three of them. The mother died in a car accident a year before.
They are haunted and terrorized by the boogeyman, which inevitably doesn’t look that scary when we finally get a good view of it. What we aren’t shown is often more frightening. It seems to show up anywhere there’s grief, and/or yet-to-be-unpacked trauma. The critic for Roger Ebert’s website revealed more than I will. Somebody comes over, and something happens, which – according to the critic – plants the boogeyman in the Harpers’ home. But with the death of the mother, and all the repression happening in the household, there was already cause for their home to be visited by the boogeyman. This is where the waters are muddied a bit.
It’s an intriguing premise, also explored in last fall’s Smile, but neither movie followed through with it in any substantive, cogent way. The Boogeyman ends in an action-packed showdown, when less would have been more, not to mention more interesting. I want to see a movie like this where the demon is defeated with words, thereby also obliterating the characters’ metaphorical demons. Am I the only weird bird that would enjoy something like that?
There is a confusing moment at the end. A character is in the process of leaving, when they are asked back inside, and then the person who summoned them says “can I help you.” A randomly chosen song plays over the end credits. It’s my favorite by this particular artist, but I don’t see how it ties into anything, thematically. But all in all, The Boogeyman won’t be the worst movie playing at the cinema right now. It’s nice to see one that’s filmed normally, without any pretentious squint-inducing trickery. For a humble little film that will probably disappear from theaters soon, it’s perfectly adequate.
Grade: B-
Film Reviews by Mark 
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