Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), a disturbed man accused of killing his children, visits Dr. Will Harper (Chris Messina) unannounced one afternoon looking for someone to talk to.  Unable to help the man, Lester hangs himself in a closet, adding to the trauma for the Harper family, still recovering from the recent loss of their matriarch.  Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), the younger of the two daughters, has increasingly severe nightmares and Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), the older of the two, grows more and more withdrawn at school.  As Sawyer begins to open up about her dreams, the details align with the same dark creature that Lester was so afraid of that he claims killed his family and led him to eventually kill himself. 

Rob Savage directs The Boogeyman for Twentieth Century Studios from a script penned by the team of Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman.  Running what, on paper, should be a lean 98 minutes, the film stretches the Stephen King short story a little beyond its limits with some unfortunate lulls in the second act.  Thankfully, Eli Born’s cinematography finds some unique shots and creative light sources that help embody the creeping nature of the creature – the titular “Boogeyman” – so that audiences always have a slight feeling of dread about what may be lurking behind the closet door or around the hallway corner and Patrick Jonsson delivers a balanced score that also helps to set the uneasy tone without being overbearing. 

Horror has always been a lens to view the unknown and try to make sense of it; most recently this genre has seen an influx of films seeking to unravel grief and trauma thanks in part to the indie success of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014).  To be clear, Kent did not invent this facet of the genre, but her film seems to have sparked a modern resurgence of these kinds of stories so that, almost ten years after her Sundance debut, The Boogeyman, another manifestation of grief, seems to offer little new to tired audiences who have seen these monsters before and know the only way to beat them is to follow the stages of grief through to acceptance.  Now, to be fair to King, the story on which this film was based was originally published in the March 1973 issue of Cavalier magazine and later included in the horror author’s first short story anthology, Night Shift in 1978, long before this current boon of using film as therapy was struck.  With some updates to the technology to bring the story forward to the present day, the film remains shockingly brutal in its setup regarding Lester’s alleged crimes, but safe for a broken ankle late in the film, there is little in ways of gore. 

As far as the performances go, everyone is serviceable, though saddled with a clunky script that seems a little unsure at times on who it wants to focus on and what they should be doing. For those easily frustrated with horror movie characters and their often-time poor decision making, The Boogeyman will certainly leave them scratching their heads in wonder how that Harper family makes, consistently, the worst possible choices at every opportunity. Sometimes, though, it is half the fun of watching these monster movies and to the films credit, once audiences accept that The Boogeyman is not looking to challenge the norms and take the template in new or exciting territory, it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. 

It starts off leaning more towards being Sawyer’s story as she is the first to really encounter the Boogeyman and has restless nights and bad dreams leaving her with a crippling fear of the dark. She works well as an entry point into the story and the film does not forget about her after the handoff to her older sister. By and large, this is the sisters’ story as Will is hardly ever present in the nightly escapades while the creature stalks the girls, or sometimes vice versa as they begin to get privy to the Boogeyman’s patterns and they work to lure him our. These sessions become a little repetitive in the lengthy middle act as no one is really gaining any ground on each other; both girls and monster are merely aware of each other’s existence but held back by the screenwriting from taking any action. With the introduction of Rita (Marin Ireland), Lester’s widow, the film does try to expand a little bit more on the lore of the creature, poking fun at the uninventive name and establishing the rules of engagement for the third act. Again, it is all pretty standard fare, done well enough but nothing stands out as exceptionally notable. 

The Boogeyman is a creature feature that builds decent ambiance to deliver some of its scares, but shrouded in shadow, and a low body count of one – if one is to include Lester, that is – it is fairly forgettable. Its biggest benefit is that there is nothing egregiously bad about it, but it feels very confused on the page as if the writing team all had different aspects they wanted to explore, but were held back by the name association with King’s work to help secure funding and give marketing something to work with. Through some flourishes in the filmmaking – namely the lighting, camera movements, and blocking – there is a clear understanding shown by Savage and Peter Gvozdas’ editing on how to build tension and when to release, but even they struggle to please the three masters that were wrestling for control of typewriter.