A Monster Lurks in the Darkness – The Boogeyman Review

Basic information:

• Genre: horror, mystery, thriller
• Duration: 1h 38min
• Release year: 2023
• Age limit: 16

Everyone knows that especially children are often afraid of the dark. If the closet door is left open, it must be closed, because of course there could be a monster in there. And there’s always something under the bed! The Boogeyman revolves around this theme. The review contains small spoilers, so prepare yourself if you don’t want to know anything about the movie.

Story

The Harper family is going through a period of mourning, because the mother of the family has died. Father Chris is trying to cope with his two children, teenager Sadie and toddler Sawyer. Sadie especially takes her mother’s death hard, and bullying at school doesn’t help the situation. On the other hand, the strange thing about Sawyer is that she doesn’t seem to remember their mother at all, instead all her screen time is spent on being afraid of the dark.

The daddy is a therapist who is unable to deal with his own trauma, let alone his daughters’. However, he continues to treat other patients, and problems arrive after a new patient comes for a visit. Suddenly the closet doors open and the lights turn off by themselves. Glistening eyes might be seen shining in the dark. Maybe Sawyer’s fear of the dark is justified, because a strange creature has arrived in their house.

Frankly said, the characters are really annoying. Or if they’re not annoying, they’re boring. In some horror movies, the characters are annoying on purpose (e.g. teenage slashers), but in a mystery movie like this, this is not intentional. The infuriating side is presented by Sadie’s “school gang”, who is seen in a few scenes, but even these scenes are already too many. Father Chris shines with his dullness by being a completely worthless slob. This is certainly intentional, because the main characters in the movie are the daughters of the family. In my opinion, the daughters being in the main role is a good solution, because the relationship between them comes out well, and at the same time they can deal with their own traumas. It’s a shame that there aren’t really any highlights in their story either.

The movie’s enemy, the Bogeyman, is a really boring monster. He is hiding in the corners, and tries to lure his victims from the darkness into a state of fear and eat them. I usually like a horror movie to have a bad guy lurking in the silence. In my opinion, silent and slow horror is the most effective form of horror compared to jump scares and gore. Bogeyman therefore relies more on jumpscares, even if the premise offers the perfect opportunity for more lurking horror. Also, the Boogeyman himself looks like a complete moron.

Music

There is nothing to say about the music of the film. The soundtrack is really basic music. Only the song playing in the final scene is rememberable, but it does not save the musical score. Still, I can’t criticize the music, because it didn’t ruin any scene since it’s so basic. So, the movie has a very basic horror movie soundtrack.

Viewing Experience

The movie is not long, so it’s not a big sacrifice of time to check it out. I don’t regret watching it. The film progresses relatively slowly considering that it is not even the longest in the world. In addition, the film does not offer anything new to the horror movie scene, and is a really traditional horror film. As a big consumer of horror, the movie felt like an evening filler movie watched from a streaming service. Watching it in a movie theater was pretty much a waste of money.

As a special mention, the use of horror elements must be criticized for a horror movie. Not too much effort has been put into the horror aspects, and the movie goes from where the fence is the lowest. As I already mentioned when analyzing Boogeyman the monster, the film has all ingredients to perform well on the horror aspects, but jump scares are its most common means of horror. Although there are slower and more haunting scenes, they are often spoiled by some action. In a few places, the movie plays with lighting quite nicely. For example, Sawyer has a ball of light so that she never has to be in the darkness. At times, for example, she rolls it along the corridors to see further into the darkness, which is a really fun and original lighting mechanic.

Summary

The Boogeyman is based on Stephen King’s short story – although, as I understand it, quite loosely. Even relying on the work of the king of horror won’t save this movie. The movie is an average horror film and doesn’t really leave any kind of impression on the viewer. In itself, the film is not bad in the field of horror films, so it does not reach the worst ratings, but it is meaningless and not worth your money.