THE BOOGEYMAN Spoiler Review

Dec 25, 2023

Posted by Lorinda Donovan | Jun 6, 2023 | Horror, Movies, Reviews | 0

Major spoilers ahead for The Boogeyman. You’ve been warned.

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In all of recorded history, there's no monster more famous than the Boogeyman. It has all kinds of different names and different backstories depending on where you are in the world, but they all mean the same thing. That scary, amorphous thing that lives in the dark, hiding under beds and in closets, ready to devour naughty children.

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But what if the Boogeyman wasn't just a tool for parents to use to get their kids to behave? What if it wasn't only real, but far more sinister and deadly than the folktales had us believe? That's the basic premise of The Boogeyman, based very loosely on Stephen King's short story.

Sophie Thatcher, Vivien Lyra Blair in The Boogeyman

The story begins with the bloodthirsty creature busting through a closet door and feeding on a terrified toddler. Then we get our intro to the main characters, starting with Sadie (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher), who enters a closet with trepidation, but not because of the monster. Not yet, anyway. The closet is that of her recently deceased mother, and she tearfully goes through the clothes hanging there, choosing to wear one of her mom's dresses to school.

Besides Sadie, there's Dad Will (Chris Messina) and little sister Sawyer (Obi-Wan Kenobi's Vivien Lyra Blair). None of them are handling their grief well, even Will who's ironically a therapist. When Sadie heads back to school, everyone stares at her and even her friends aren't treating her the same, including her best friend Bethany (Madison Hu). One particular frenemy (Maddie Nichols) even spills food on Sadie's mom's dress, prompting Sadie to run out and go back home.

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Meanwhile, Will's in his office at the house when a strange man named Lester (Suicide Squad's David Dastmalchian) enters the office, and even though Will's nervous, he sees Lester's pain and desperation and lets him sit and talk. Lester reveals that all of his children died under mysterious circumstances and that the prevailing rumor is that he killed them all.

But then he tells Will how the Boogeyman was the real killer, and how his kids tried to tell him about it, but he didn't believe them. Lester says the creature feeds on trauma and pain and shows Will a picture that one of his kids drew of it. Spooked, Will excuses himself and calls the police. But while he's doing that, Lester disappears into the house.

David Dastmalchian in The Boogeyman

Sadie comes home and hears noises, following them upstairs to her mom's art studio. The room's been trashed, and she hears talking and struggling coming from the closet. She's horrified to discover Lester's hung himself. Or so it seems.

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Sawyer comes home on the bus only to find chaos outside her home, police, EMTs and press all over the place. After the cops leave and everything settles down, Will puts Sawyer to bed, marveling at how she's able to sleep with so much light. She has Christmas lights, neon rainbows and a special moon lamp that she sleeps with. She has Will check the closet and under the bed and he says goodnight.

Then Will pops in on Sadie, who tries to talk to him about how she's feeling but he shuts her down. He treats both daughters with avoidance, dealing with their mother's death by not dealing with it at all. This leads Sadie to turn to the internet, watching videos about how to contact the dead.

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The Boogeyman makes his first appearance, blasting open Sawyer's closet door and scooting under the bed. Sawyer makes use of her moon lamp and rolls it under the bed, catching the barest glimpse of the creature. She runs to Sadie's room and tells her there's something there, and sleeps with her. Sadie sings the lullaby their mom used to sing to them to soothe them both.

Chris Messina in The Boogeyman

The next day Sadie and Sawyer see their therapist, Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton). Sawyer tells her about her fear of the dark and the Boogeyman. Dr. Weller suggests an exercise with a red light that flashes on and off, gradually staying off longer and longer, making the periods of darkness longer – long enough for Sawyer, who's clinging to Sadie, to see the Boogeyman. The poor kid's scared enough to piss herself.

That night, Sadie snoops around her dad's office and listens to the recording of Lester's story and finds an address for Lester and the notebook of his kid's drawings. After running a pencil over one of the pages, finds the drawing of the Boogeyman. Meanwhile, Sawyer's upstairs investigating noises in the hallway. She rolls her moon lamp down the hall and hears it get smashed. She runs downstairs and with surprising strength, angrily shoves Sadie, accusing her of trying to scare her. But Sadie insists it wasn't her, and Sawyer sees the Boogeyman drawing.

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At school, Sadie asks best friend Bethany to drive her to Lester's house, which looks abandoned and even has a bright red, ugly "Murderers" spray-painted on it. Sadie goes in and looks around the scary place, finding that someone's still living there. She goes upstairs and sees hundreds of lit candles on the floor. That's when she meets Lester's wife, Rita (Marin Ireland), who looks more like a guerilla warrior than a suburban housewife, all dirty, ragged and sporting a shotgun.

Rita assumes Sadie's just another bratty teenager looking to torment her, but Sadie tells her that it was her house where Lester died. She asks about what happened to their kids and Rita tells her about the Boogeyman, how it hides in the dark, feeding off pain and trauma, and can even mimic human voices. But then she scares the crap out of Sadie by shooting at what she thinks is the Boogeyman behind her, sending Sadie running back outside.

Marin Ireland in The Boogeyman

When Sadie returns home, Sawyer pesters her about the Boogeyman and Sadie locks herself in her room to get away from her. And then in one of the best jump scares in the whole flick, the Boogeyman busts through the door and knocks her down, jamming itself into her mouth. Eeee. Turns out it's just a dream, though. For the moment, anyway.

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Sadie's horrified to find that Will's packed up everything in Mom's art studio and dumped it down in the basement. Sadie goes down and finds among other things her mom's lighter, a stash tin of weed and an old video camera that has footage of her when she was a baby and her mom singing the lullaby to her.

Back at school, Bethany tries talking to Sadie, suggesting that they hang out. Reluctantly, Sadie invites her and the rest of the frenemies over to try and do something normal. Will and Sawyer agree to stay out of the way so that Sadie can have a fun evening. But up in her room, everyone's bored. That is until Sadie brings out her mom's stash tin. They light up the joint and Sadie takes her first toke, coughing. But the coughing doesn't stop, and she goes to the bathroom. She feels something in her throat and pulls out a long string with Sawyer's baby tooth tied to the end. Ick.

Then frenemy Natalie makes things even worse by making Sadie show them where Lester died and then locking her in the closet. As the frenemies laugh, Sadie panics when she sees the Boogeyman emerge from the shadows. When the door finally opens, Sadie makes sure to give Natalie a well-deserved slap.

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As the frenemies leave, Sawyer's in the darkened living room playing video games. The Boogeyman comes after her, and Sawyer uses the bright flashes of the video game to cast light around. But it doesn't work, and Sawyer hears the creature moving around her. She tries to keep quiet, but it grabs her, and in one of the most startling moments, throws the poor kid into the TV.

Vivien Lyra Blair in The Boogeyman

Will takes her to the hospital, and Sadie vows to find a way to get rid of the creature. She gets a call from Rita, who tells her she's found a way to kill it. Sadie goes back to Rita's house, where Rita apologizes before slamming her into a wall. She ties Sadie to a beam, using her as bait to lure the Boogeyman into the trap she's set.

The creature takes the bait and when it steps through her tripwires, a slew of shotgun shells go off in every direction, hitting the creature and taking it down. Or so it seems. But when they get close to it, the creature snatches Rita and kills her. Sadie escapes and runs for home, realizing that Will and Sawyer will be the next targets.

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When she gets home, she finds Sawyer hiding in a closet covered in Christmas lights, armed with a bottle of hairspray. They go down to the basement to find their injured dad. But before they can escape the Christmas lights get unplugged, leaving them with only Sadie's lighter.

It's not looking good for them, but then suddenly, the lighter flame grows bigger and brighter. Sadie remembers the video she watched about contacting the dead, and how she asked her mom to bend the flame if she was there. The growing flame bends and fills the room with light. Then they fight back against the Boogeyman by using the hairspray, making a huge blowtorch to burn the creature until the hairspray runs out.

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But a resourceful Sawyer finds a bottle of charcoal lighter and sprays the creature with it. Sadie throws the lighter, burning the creature to death. As the family escapes, Sadie watches that dress of her mom's burning, and thanks her mom for helping them.

Sophie Thatcher in The Boogeyman

Later on, we see the whole family in Dr. Weller's office, where Will opens up for the first time about losing his wife. Sadie and Sawyer cling to him, both of them glad to hear him talking about it. After the session's over, Will and Sawyer head out, but Sadie hears Dr. Weller asking her to come back in for a moment.

But when she goes back into the office, Dr. Weller's not there. What is there is an open, darkened closet. Sadie approaches it and quickly shuts the door.

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I think what amazes me most about The Boogeyman is how incredibly formulaic it is. It uses every single horror trope there is or ever was. So it should be really boring and disappointing. But it's not. Don't get me wrong; you’ll roll your eyes at the gimmicky moments like Sawyer's moon lamp rolling under the bed and gasp! There's the monster under the bed. Or the more recent trend of having people pull long strings of ick out of a hole in their face. And you’ll have WTF moments wondering where the hell Dad is when his kids are being attacked by the Boogeyman.

But what's really surprising is that despite all that and its by-the-numbers setup, The Boogeyman still works. I think that's largely due to the strong performances of the cast, especially Sophie Thatcher and young Vivien Lyra Blair. They both draw you in with their heartbreak and earnest terror.

Add that to smart directorial decisions like showing the creature as little as possible for as long as possible and using sound design to aid in the storytelling. When they finally need to show the monster, they use a unique and strange design; it all helps elevate it above the formula. So even though it will never be accused of being the scariest movie ever made, The Boogeyman delivers a solid creep-fest that’ll have you leaving the lights on and making sure all your closets are closed.

Directed by: Rob Savage

Written by: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman

Release Date: June 2, 2023

Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 hr 38 min

Distributor: 20th Century Studios

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