Tim (Barry Watson) must return to his childhood home and confront the visions that have terrified him his whole life. When he gets there, the evil forces behind the visions are given another chance to get their hands on him.
The story sounds a lot like Darkness Falls from a few years back. That film was pretty disappointing but it was pretty stylish. Boogeyman is more or less the same. It offers a few decent scares and it is pretty stylish. However, the film is kind of a joke, using cheap tactics to scare it's audience. The attempted scares are all cheap loud noises, which might make you jump if you watch the movie in a theater full of girls. There were maybe a few scenes that did scare me. Like the first fifteen minutes or so are pretty creepy but then the film falls back into generic land. It rates a three on the horror scale.
The acting isn't as bad as one would expect. Barry Watson gives a decent performance but he isn't good enough to truly save the film. Emily Deschanel also gives a decent performance, nothing special. Lucy Lawless has a small role and she makes the most out of it. Skye McCole Bartusiak offers the worst performance and her character is pretty pointless. Director Stephen T. Kay can't really build up suspense well. All he does is film the main character scaring himself to death and it all becomes a bit silly after awhile.
A big problem with the film is the script. It's very poor and it doesn't make a lot of sense. The ending is especially random and nothing is explained at all. The reason why the story is weak is because of the very short running time. 85 minutes is too short to tell a real effective story with this type of material. If they had bothered to write a decent story with decent scares then the movie would have been a lot better. However they didn't and Boogeyman ends up being a ridiculous and disappointing horror film. In the end, while better than The Grudge, this lame horror film is still not really worth watching. Rating 5/10
The story sounds a lot like Darkness Falls from a few years back. That film was pretty disappointing but it was pretty stylish. Boogeyman is more or less the same. It offers a few decent scares and it is pretty stylish. However, the film is kind of a joke, using cheap tactics to scare it's audience. The attempted scares are all cheap loud noises, which might make you jump if you watch the movie in a theater full of girls. There were maybe a few scenes that did scare me. Like the first fifteen minutes or so are pretty creepy but then the film falls back into generic land. It rates a three on the horror scale.
The acting isn't as bad as one would expect. Barry Watson gives a decent performance but he isn't good enough to truly save the film. Emily Deschanel also gives a decent performance, nothing special. Lucy Lawless has a small role and she makes the most out of it. Skye McCole Bartusiak offers the worst performance and her character is pretty pointless. Director Stephen T. Kay can't really build up suspense well. All he does is film the main character scaring himself to death and it all becomes a bit silly after awhile.
A big problem with the film is the script. It's very poor and it doesn't make a lot of sense. The ending is especially random and nothing is explained at all. The reason why the story is weak is because of the very short running time. 85 minutes is too short to tell a real effective story with this type of material. If they had bothered to write a decent story with decent scares then the movie would have been a lot better. However they didn't and Boogeyman ends up being a ridiculous and disappointing horror film. In the end, while better than The Grudge, this lame horror film is still not really worth watching. Rating 5/10