Boogeyman Year: 2005 Director: Stephen T. Kay Written by: Eric Kripke, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White Threat: Boogeyman Weapon of Choice: Darkness IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

Rish's Reviews
Does anybody want to see the next theatrical horror film with me? 'Cause I went to this one with my Irish friend, and I paid for it once again.
Let me know.
The second film from Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's production company Ghost House, Boogeyman tells the tale of a young man (Barry Watson) who has been terrified of dark closets ever since his father was taken by the Boogeyman when he was a boy. Now, he has to go back to the house it happened in, and put that fear behind hi . . . wait, why did he have to, exactly?
Yes, it's a premise we've seen a dozen times in the last five years (with an opening annoyingly similar to They and Darkness Falls, but I paid to see it again.
Though nearly every other character seemed unbelievable or annoying, Barry Watson's performance worked for me. He plays a psychologically damaged character (truly, a lot of what scares him turns out to be only in his mind), and emotes some real dread while not appearing to be the cowardly man-boy I would be in the situation. The Boogeyman himself (itself?) remains mostly a mystery. His powers, his motivations, his origins, all remain unknown. I only wish they had dared do the same with his appearance. Or simply allowed him to be played by a man in a dark cloak. But ah well.
It was rough being stuck in traffic with my Irish friend afterward, because he is so good at reviling things and telling me how awful popular cinema is, without ever coming up with an idea of how things could be better. He asked me, "How do movies like this even get MADE?" For me, if you have to ask that question, then you have no business going to scary movies.
And as happened with Freddy Versus Jason, though I had problems with the movie, I felt like defending it in my review after hearing the vitriol spewed forth by my immigrant friend. It's no classic, and not something that people will talk about a decade from now (I imagine that even a year from now it'll be forgotten), but I'm not going to disparage it.
Shot in New Zealand, there were no rappers in Boogeyman, and for that alone it should be commended. I'll be honest, I found this to be a pretty good horror film. It was simple, yeah, but I thought it achieved what it set out to do. True, there was probably less story here than its 86 minutes necessitated, but it worked more often than it didn't. Like last month's Hide and Seek, this had a great first half, filled to overflowing with creepy camera angles, loud noises, and quick flashes of something disturbing.
To me, the biggest weaknesses of the film were: 1) the ending didn't really satisfy; 2) they used computer-generated effects for the title character toward the end; and 3) the use of the "mysteriously spooktastic, hollow-eyed child*" didn't really work.
The film was far from perfect--there were unanswered questions galore, the dialogue was not great, character motivations were oddly unclear, there were a couple pointless scenes, and an ending that made no sense--but it wasn't nearly as bad as I've heard people say, and a far cry from the truly awful genre flicks gorehounds heartilly embrace. And unless I'm getting weaker in my old age, it was scarier than the majority of horror films, past or present.
After the movie, my friend said, "Clearly these filmmakers had no idea what makes a horror film work." When I asked him to clarify, he said, "Look at the horror pictures that really stay with you and the way they were executed. Look at The Haunting of Hill House sometime." I felt like arguing that that was a book and there's no film by that title, but I wouldn't have gotten far. I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one.
Best Scare: Probably for me it was the reveal of the ghost of one of the Boogeyman's victims. A well-executed scare, in a film with several.
Another Best Scare: I hate to continue to shower praise on such a slight film, but there was a moment when our hero goes to a children's hospital and finds a girl there who's hysterically shrieking at something on the ceiling. When he looks, one of the ceiling tiles has been lifted up an inch or two, exposing the darkness within. Or is it just darkness? A profoundly disturbing visual completely divorced from shock cuts or loud noise scares.
I'd Recommend It To: Fans of the genre who need no gore, nudity, or big twists in their Horror.
*Patent pending.
Posted: February 17, 2005

Total Skulls: 26

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film		myriad childhood-terror-must-be-faced-years-later flicks
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears		Lucy Lawless
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?