3 out of 10
 

A Horrific Waste Of Horror

Boogeyman is remarkable for I cannot remember a movie where there's not a corner that was cut, right down to "introducing a new talent" in the form of Barry Watson as Tim to ensure that they didn't even have to pay a star's salary. So just why are we being flooded with cheap horror flicks that all look alike? Simple, can you think of a better way to make a profit with just a derelict house and 23 crummy actors? With big budget-busting action movies heading south like Canadian geese these days, someone has to make a buck or two to pay the rent.

Twenty-two years after seeing his fatherith all the set kit of the genre: tsnatched away by a monster, unseen to the audience, hiding in the closet, Tim returns to spend a night in is parents home on the advice of his psychiatrist. With all the set kit of the genre: the loss of innocence of the young child, the creepy house miles from anywhere in middle America, the love interest who pops round unexpectedly, it's all bang to the formula. Even so, it was weird though, for "Boogeyman" gave the impression that it could have been something very different. All the pointers in the story by scriptwriter Eric Kripke, who had only previously worked part-time on the "Supernatural" and "Tarzan" TV, shows that he was moving towards saying something very powerful about the power of fear: it seems as if Tim's own phobia, induced by his father before he was snatched away, is turning him into precisely the monster he fears.Sadly though, it seems as if bit-part-actor-turned-director Steven Kay lost his nerve the way Tim doesn't. Too scared of giving us all a surprise ny haning Tim be his own Boogeyman and produce something that's really different to all the other teen flicks out there, he has had an actual monster written in at the end. It flattens the story with a steam-roller. What a shame, as ot could have been one of the great films of the year that really made the audience think.

With lots of sudden door slams in the middle of protracted quiet periods and the house shrouded in the mist, it never fails to be creepy and make you jump out of your seat, but with a long wait for such a flat and brief finale, regardless of however frantic, it remains as we expected: 89 minutes of our lives gone on a flash-in-the-pan. And with $19million spent and $46million back in the coffers, Tinseltown's rent again.