A supernatural horror as uninspired as its title. Like many kids, seven-year-old Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) is convinced there’s a monster in her closet. And, guess what? There is!
Because, in the wake of her mum’s sudden death in a car crash, Sawyer’s fears take flesh.
Sawyer and her teenage sister (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher – who does her darnedest to save the day and this movie) thus spend most of the movie being terrorised by a stonking great grief metaphor who likes to toy with its prey…
The Boogeyman is based on a Stephen King short story about a man (David Dastmalchian) who confesses to a therapist (Chris Messina) that a monster has murdered his children.
It’s been made into a movie before and the unoriginal spin it’s given here is all the more disappointing for being the big Hollywood break for Rob Savage, a British director whose debut of the Covid pandemic.
Initially, Savage rachets up the tension with clenched, claustrophobic intensity, but the jump scares are standard, the creepy effects are derivative and the movie’s ‘rules’ make infuriatingly little sense.
We’re repeatedly told the monster is scared away by the light – so, just switch on some lights, already!
Out Friday in cinemas.
