Film Review: Better Check Under The Bed Again

The Boogeyman is a horror movie directed by Rob Savage. Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman adapted the short story written by Stephen King. The story had first appeared in the anthology entitled Night Shift. The cast includes Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, and David Dastmalchian.

A therapist and his two daughters are grieving the recent death of his wife when a strange man appears at the office and wants to discuss the recent deaths of all three of his children. He is found hanging in the therapist’s closet soon after his impromptu session which introduces a strange, malevolent presence lurking in the dark shadows of the house. The man was trying to convince the therapist of the existence of this monstrosity. The daughters start seeing and experiencing the strange manifestation first and have a difficult time convincing their father. The older daughter begins her own investigation and finds there is something to the dead man’s claims. This something is of course something worthy of the dark imaginings of Stephen King.

I usually find myself quite disappointed in horror films individually even though I still indulge in the genre occasionally. I found this film to be almost pretty well done. The grief conveyed in the film over the tragic death of the wife and mother seemed pretty genuine. As someone going through profound mourning myself at the moment, I am a little sensitive about story points in this arena. I was not very familiar with these cast members, but that turned out to not be a detriment. It’s still a horror film, and I am skeptical of how faithful the screen writers were the original Stephen King story. Some of the usual exasperating horror tropes were there, but there was enough competency in the writing for me to not mind so much. Don’t get me wrong; it’s no cinematic masterpiece. It probably won’t be anything I will be in a hurry to rewatch; however, it was a little better than so many in this genre. The horror film industry has set the bar pretty low for many years, so my relatively positive experience of this particular film is not something I will count on too much.