The Boogeyman: G-Rated Scares and Dreary Vibe Mar Stephen King Adaptation

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C+

 In 1980, German filmmaker and frequent Rainer Fassbinder collaborator Ulli Lommel made a film released in North America called The Boogeyman.

 I saw that movie. Regretted it.

 When it was announced that director Rob Savage was making a horror film called The Boogeyman, I remembered Lommel’s film and wondered — despite no evidence of artistic, monetary, or nostalgic motive — if it was a remake. 

 It isn’t. That would have been weird.

 I had also entertained a wandering, somewhat facetious, hope that Savage’s film would be about a family haunted by a 70s disco song. Sure, it sounds like a bad joke, but considering how much Stephen King —the originator of the source material —loves 70s music and pulp culture references, it doesn’t seem so farfetched. He’s done better with worse.

 But. Again. Not the case.

 This is what Savage gives us: 

 A disheveled, Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) arrives late at night at the home of psychiatrist, Dr. Will Harper (Chris Messina). In the horror-verse, an unscheduled visit to a psychiatrist is an indisputable sign that things have escalated to deadly seriousness.

Also, a psychiatrist, particularly a young, progressive psychiatrist, signals that we’re in for high-tier horror—the kind that strive for the erudite thrills of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), but more often shaped movies like The Mephisto Waltz (1971), and Audrey Rose (1977) to fit effortlessly into a Walmart DVD remainder bin.

Billings blusters through a story of how he’s taking the fall for an entity that has killed his family. The harder Billings struggles to be believed, the more batshit crazy he appears. But we get it. We know Billings is on the up and up. But Harper? Poor old Doc Harper—for all his medical, psychiatric, workings-of-the-human-mind know how—is going to learn the hard way. And we who know better, are left cursing the arrogance of the medical industry!

How many more families will be disrupted by evil demons simply because doctors put medical expertise before the ramblings of an unscheduled patient?

 The fallout of Harper’s vanity is redirected to his children; teenage Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and her younger sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair). Already suffering from the loss of their mother and a grieving, unavailable father, the girls begin to get hassled by a stick-figured mantis-like demon on stilts.

The subtext here has something to do with grief and fear and creating our monsters. I don’t get how that works, or why it pertains to this story. Then again, I’m only a genre fan, not a psychiatrist.

I’m not so familiar with Savage’s work as to make comparisons but The Boogeyman feels surprisingly sedate next to Savage’s Dashcam (2021), a film that is equal parts compelling as it is revolting, and Host (2020), an early entry into pandemic zoom-horror about a séance gone wrong.

 Savage’s The Boogeyman is superior to Lommel’s in every respect; technically, with solid performances, and a better story. Savage sheds enough light on the screen enough to give the shadows a place to play.

Still, aside from a few cleverly executed jump-scares—which are to horror what tickling is to comedy—The Boogeyman drags with G-rated scares and an appropriately dreary atmosphere, but dreary nonetheless.

The Boogeyman. Directed by Rob Savage. Starring Sophie Thatcher, Vivien Lyra Blair, Chris Messina and David Dastmalchian. In theatres June 2.