The Boogeyman (***) Training wheels horror

Director Rob Savage
Screenplay Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman based on the short story by Stephen King
Starring Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, David Dastmalchian, Marin Ireland

The most horrific scene of The Boogeyman takes place in the first few minutes. As a toddler attempts to sleep in her crib, she hears voices coming from the closet. The voices sound like her parents, so she looks for them to join her. Soon enough, she begins to realize the voices come from something sinister. By the this time, she begins to cry, then wail, then we see the camera pan away and we see a splatter on a family photo.

From here we move to the Harper family on their first day back to school after their matriarch has died in a car accident. The father Will (Messina), a therapist comes across a new patient (Dastmalchian) who is known for the loss of all of his children. He claims to have been the victim of something terrible. He even shows the therapist the picture of the killer that one of his children drew.

Before long, oldest daughter Sadie (Thatcher) witnesses something horrible in their house and the misery is now passed completely over to the Harper’s home.

The Boogeyman is the first big feature film directed by renowned director of two well regarded pandemic era small films, Host and Dashcam. While it may lack the ingenuity of those smaller budget films, it is completely competent. There are no more disturbing images than the opening scene. The characters are forced to do things to move the plot forward that no one in their rightly scared mind would contemplate. In a movie where creepy things live in the dark, why can no one turn a light on or, perhaps, not go into that dark basement where the light switch doesn’t work?

If you can get past the frustration of parents not hearing loud noises while kids are wandering alone in the dark house, the film has its moments. There is a nice moon night light that youngest daughter Sawyer (Blair) puts to good use. Blair and Thatcher are believable as sisters working their way through trauma. Messina, when he’s not forced to be oblivious, has the true feeling of a father dealing with grief and fear less successfully than he expects of his patients.

There is nothing here that a pre-teen would be damaged by, and it works as the kind of film one might watch for their first horror. Most of these tropes work if one hasn’t seen jump scares or heard loud sudden noises on screen before in a film. That said, there is nothing here that more experienced horror film junkies will remember past the rolling of the credits.

(*** out of *****)