Film Review: The Boogeyman is a throwback to B-movie horror - but lacks Stephen King's power
Sophie Thatcher in The Boogeyman
- The Boogeyman
- ★★☆☆☆
Adapted from a short story by Stephen King, (15A) opens with therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina), still devastated by the death of his wife, reluctantly agreeing to treat Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), a man who blames the death of his three children on a supernatural entity who sucks the life from his victims.
Will, of course, is a rationalist who refuses to believe in the supernatural (“There’s no such thing as monsters,” he tells his angst-ridden young daughter Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), a sentiment publicly shared by the grieving teenager Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) even as she tries to summon her mother’s spirit in a private séance.
But while Will tries to explain away Sawyer’s fear of the dark as a manifestation of her unprocessed grief, the audience is acutely aware that the bizarre events that begin to plague the family have their origin in inexplicable evil.
Stephen King fans will be aware that The Boogeyman is a short story dating from 1973, the year King published his debut novel Carrie, but Rob Savage’s adaptation has little in common with that story’s power.
Instead, it’s something of a throwback to less sophisticated, B-movie horror, and unfolds as a straightforward series of minor jump-scares in which Sophie Thatcher shines as the grief-stricken teen who is forced to shoulder an impossible burden. (cinema release)
