While “The Boogeyman” is considered to be one of Stephen King’s most memorable short stories, Rob Savage‘s film adaptation will ultimately get lost among this era’s glut of “grief horror.” The Host and Dashcam director’s first big-studio movie naturally expands on the source material, however the new additions to the story are bewilderingly unoriginal. What was once a smart and original piece of fiction is now a routine story about monsters as metaphors.
Reinterpretation makes a lot of King movies worth watching, yet The Boogeyman is riskless. In all fairness, the short story can’t support a whole movie. So writers Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place, Haunt) and Mark Heyman (Black Swan) had to make stuff up. Sadly, they didn’t search too far when generating ideas; all they evidently did was look at current trends in horror. As a result, director Savage is sacked with a ready-made haunter with zero personality.
The main cast does the best they can with the predictable script. Even in this stale tale, Chris Messina, Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair are all visibly talented. Having their characters immediately be introduced as a sad, broken family robs them of being seen as anything but their misery, though. They’re the latest embodiments of cursory horror grief. Everyone struggles to acclimate to a recent loss, although Thatcher’s character’s friends are oddly insensitive, likely for the sake of puerile conflict and more setup for jump-scares.
Mourning is much too simple for the Harpers; their pain has to be manifested in order for them to feel better. So the story introduces a hoary supernatural metaphor after David Dastmalchian‘s character, a troubled new patient of the father, brings something evil along with him into the protagonists’ house. It’s not long before the daughters experience unexplained events that their father denies until he’s literally pulled into this monstrous personification of grief.
From the crazy consultant who provides an exposition dump, to the youngest child having a quirky fear of the dark, The Boogeyman is formulaic. Savage’s direction is a mild bright spot; after Host, he obviously knows how to use a dark room to its fullest potential. Regrettably, though, these terror sequences are as run-of-the-mill as they are ephemeral. It’s all been done before and better. And as if this whole affair isn’t uninspired enough, the namesake, when visible, is another example of spindly nightmare fuel whose only creative criterion was probably something like, “an alien from A Quiet Place, but make it boogy-er.”
Sluggish pacing and a totally sullen atmosphere make The Boogeyman feel longer than its actual runtime. Add on an undistinguished story and this movie ends up being a chore. Redeeming factors are the better than average acting to soften a great deal of dry writing, and the scare sequences are, at the very least, technically competent.
Savage’s first venture into big-budget horror is disappointingly pedestrian and musty. Things that go bump in the night has timeless appeal, but the delivery system here is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Tales from the Paulside 
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