'The Boogeyman' is really…ok

Seeing a trailer for a new Stephen King adaptation is always a pleasant surprise, but “The Boogeyman” seemed like a difficult feat to pull off, given the short source material.

From 20^th Century Studios, comes “The Boogeyman”, which isn’t a remake or reboot of the 1980 or 2005 films of the same name, but is based on Stephen King’s short, and I mean very short, story from 1978.

Written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman, and directed by Rob Savage, this Boogeyman isn’t as scary or effective as the story he comes from.

Here’s the stretched-out plot of this new film, “Still reeling from the tragic death of their mother, a teenage girl and her younger sister find themselves plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it's too late.”

I must give the writers credit; they had a story that took up mere pages of a magazine in 1978 and added very safe-bet additions to the small piece.

In the original story, we start in the office of Dr. Harper, a psychiatrist, where a man, Lester Billings, tells the doctor about the "murders" of his three young children, describing the events of the past several years.

Lester reveals that the children cried out, "Boogeyman!" before being left alone, and the closet door ajar when finding their corpses, even though he’s certain the door was shut.

As Lester finishes his story and starts to leave, Dr. Harper asks him to make a future appointment with the nurse. Finding the nurse absent, he goes to the office and finds it empty, with the closet door ajar. The Boogeyman emerges from the closet, casting off its disguise of Dr. Harper.

The main characters of the short story remain intact on film with Chris Messina as Dr. Will Harper and David Dastmalchian as Lester Billings. From there, besides a few scenes reminiscent of the short, it does its own thing.

The movie starts out in line with the short. We see one of Lester’s kids be killed by the Boogeyman and we jump to Dr. Harper at the end of a therapy session with a woman.

We then see he has two daughters, Sadie and Sawyer, played by Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair, respectively. Both highlights of the film in their acting.

As the girls head to school, we get hints of their mother’s tragic death. Back home, we get an eerie entrance from Dastmalchian’s Lester, as he lets himself into Dr. Harper’s home office where he holds therapy sessions.

At this point, the plot of the short takes place. Lester tells Dr. Harper about his kids and the Boogeyman; Harper listens in disbelief. Lester shows him his kid’s drawing of the monster, at which point Harper excuses himself. Lester stares at the closet door in the office now ajar. He’s alone.

David Dastmalchian’s performance although brief, is fantastic. You can feel his guilt and sadness as he pleads with Dr. Harper to believe him. Tears roll down his cheeks and his staring at the closet is unnerving.

You may recognize Dastmalchian as Polka Dot Man in James Gunn's "The Suicide Squad," or from his work in “Ant-Man”, "Dune", or "The Dark Knight". Dastmalchian is also fan and friend of our sister station, MeTV’s Svengoolie, in case you need any more reasons to enjoy his work.

Dr. Harper calls the police on Lester, thinking he might be dangerous. Meanwhile, Sadie is home from high school, where she is bullied by teens that fit into Stephen King’s tropes well.

Weird noises come from the dead mother’s art studio when Sadie goes to check, it’s coming from the closet. She enters and two jump scares later, it’s revealed Lester took his own life. Of course, we know the Boogeyman did it.

We’re left with a still grieving father and two emotionally distraught daughters. We follow Sadie who becomes the main character, after thinking we might follow Dr. Harper. The father appears less frequently in the film, although I assume this was set up so fans of the short story would hope there’d be a shocking reveal at the film’s end. SPOILERS…there’s not.

The rest of the film feels formulaic and too polished for me. It’s well done for what it is, but hasn’t left me wanting to rewatch it. It felt forgettable and vanilla.

There were moments when I thought they’d make it as dark as the short, but unfortunately not. It felt like a watered-down version of the 2014 Australian indie film hit, “The Babadook”, where the monster represents grief, guilt, and trauma.

The Boogeyman himself felt generic and uninspired, looking like a monster from another Beck and Woods penned film, “A Quiet Place”. It feels like Director Rob Savage and company were forced to hold back on a film that could’ve been terrifying.

Rob Savage is an excellent director with his most well-known film being the pandemic era made film, “HOST”, a found footage horror film about people on a video call when supernatural forces attack. The film struggles to stand out as anything special. Stephen King’s work can be and has been adapted better. For me this one’s worth at least one watch if you’re a big fan of King.

Perhaps companies adapting King’s work, should ask for his input when stretching his short stories to feature length. Or make more anthology films like King and George A. Romero’s “Creepshow” films.