Review
BOOGEYMAN
Starring Barry Watson, Emily Deschanel and Skye McCole Bartusiak
Directed by Stephen T. Kay
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If I said that Boogeyman is the best horror movie since Scream, you would probably think it’s a cheap ploy by a secondary-market film reviewer to get one of his quotes used in the ad for the film. In truth, however, with a surprisingly smart script and lots of skin-crawling gags, Boogeyman is the most fun I’ve had being scared in a long time.
Tim (Barry Watson) is a troubled man with a fear of small spaces. Living in a loft apartment, with no cupboard doors and a glass windowed fridge, he is still trying to get over a nightmarish visit from the Boogeyman 15 years before. Although his mother (and years of therapy) have told him that his dad abandoned him when he was a child, Tim still believes that papa was dragged into his closet by a spectral monster. When Tim returns to his hometown after the death of his mother, he learns that his fear of the dark might not be as irrational as he once thought.
The idea of the Boogeyman is certainly nothing new – closet monsters have been a staple of horror movies and TV forever (for a particularly sharp small-screen rendition, check out the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she goes up against the Kinderstat – chilling). But what this movie does well is acknowledge the audience’s fear of the dark and milk it for all it’s worth.
Having Sam Raimi on board as a producer certainly helps. Director Stephen T. Kay spends a good chunk of the film sweeping through Tim’s rundown country home with tracking shots that inevitably lead to a twitching doorknob or into the darkened recesses of a closet. This technique is textbook Raimi, as are numerous high-angle shots of Watson padding around the house in terror, and low-angle shots of anything approaching. Without a script to back them up, these would simply be disembodied scare tactics offering cheap thrills. Instead, writers Eric Kripke, Juilet Snowden and Stiles White have created a thrilling mythology around the Boogeyman, and more specifically the closet, that makes almost every shot in the film feel loaded with fright.
While the performances by a cast of relative unknowns (Watson spends most of the time looking like Skeet Ulrich in Scream, and Emily Deschanel for the most part resembles her sister Zooey) are certainly competent, the real star of the film is the restraint that Kay shows in revealing the monster. Using quick cuts, minimal music and most importantly almost never showing the monster, he takes advantage of the fact that your imagination will always make the worst of a bad situation.
The film has a PG-13 rating, but that shouldn’t distress hardcore horror buffs. While there is very little gore in the film, Boogeyman is a nail-biter from the opening frame. Boogeyman can instantly transport you back to those rainy nights of your childhood where shadowy lumps of clothing on the floor of your room become the most vicious creatures you could imagine. And for that the film is a terrifying success. |
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