Boogeyman (Special Edition DVD)

At the time Boogeyman was released in theaters last January, it was not shown to critics until one day before the film’s release and although it was #1 in its opening weekend, it quickly fell out of the top 10 and suffered very poor reviews. I was one of the few critics who gave the movie a marginal thumbs-up, so I wondered how I would feel about it seeing it a second time. Would I come to my senses and wonder what the heck I was thinking in the first place, or would I stay true to my original opinion? Or would like it even more? First impressions don’t always last (for example, I didn’t like The Big Lebowski at all the first time I saw it, and now it is one of my all-time favorites) so I was curious to give the Boogeyman another go.

Barry Watson plays Tim, an upwardly mobile Gen-Y’er who has never been able to get past witnessing the brutal death of his father at the hands of the lethal boogeyman who lived in his boyhood closet. When Tim’s mother (Lucy Lawless) dies, he must go back to the unhallowed halls of his childhood home where dark memories — and a certain boogeyman — await him.

A couple of pretty girls (Tory Mussett and Emily Deschanel) are thrown into the mix for no apparent reason (not that horror movies have ever needed a reason for putting pulchritude in peril) but this really is Watson’s movie. He is in nearly every scene, and he has to carry the story from start to finish. He does an admirable job, perhaps an even better one than it might seem at first blush since the character of Tim is not particularly well drawn.

Spoiler Warning…

I liked the film a bit less upon second viewing, but I still don’t think it deserves the vicious criticisms it got. It is, as I said in my first review, a horror film obviously made for young people in keeping with its PG-13 rating (meaning it’s really for kids 12 and under). If you look at it that way, or as a way to spend an hour and half mindlessly but painlessly, then Boogeyman is an all right suspense/thriller.

It does have an awful lot of plot holes, especially at the ending when two people very close to Tim are killed by the Boogeyman but this is not resolved… Why isn’t Tim a suspect in the their murders? Instead, it’s implied that he goes happily off into the sunset. There is also an unnecessary subplot (which I niggled at in my theatrical release review, but liked even less for round two) involving missing children, and the history of the Boogeyman; it makes you wonder: Is there only one Boogeyman in the entire world? Does he just work certain neighborhoods? Why does he take adults as well as children?

There is still the one excellent shot of the Boogeyman on the stairs towards the end of the movie, but the rest of the CGI looks even hokier on the small screen.

The DVD has an alternate ending, which I was hoping would be better. At first, it looked like it would be (a bleak ending would have been more fitting) but then it switches gears and makes even less sense than the theatrical ending. In this one, the Boogeyman shows his many faces and sucks Tim into the closet. Then, seemingly hours later, Tim emerges from the closet with no explanation as to how he escaped, then gazes out the window of his old childhood bedroom triumphantly for what seems like ever.

The multiple "Making of" featurettes are reasonably interesting, but don’t really shed much light on anything. The deleted scenes are fine (you get a little more Lucy Lawless) and the visual effect progressions inside-look is well done.

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson

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Read Horror.com's interviews with producer Sam Raimi, and actor Barry Watson and director Stephen Kay.