Movie Reviews
While I wouldn’t call this new “Boogeyman” a remake, I couldn’t help but yearn for that old feeling of sheer terror that I haven’t felt from watching a movie in far too long of time. I couldn’t help but anticipate some kind of good old fashion scary movie. I didn’t get what I couldn’t help but hope for.
I have to admit, the opening scene is surprisingly effective if not partially funny by accident. And I don’t want to make this the sort of thing that had promise at first, but then got ruined (even though it is) because this is a film that never should have been made in the first place. This should never have been considered, it definitely should never have made it to paper, and it certainly should never have made it to celluloid. But then again...this is Hollywood we’re considering here. We now are in the type of era that delivers films for nothing but commercial success. All these kinds of filmmakers want anymore is money. And if that is not the case, then it sure looks like it.
In this new and stylistically “improved” “Boogeyman”, we follow a small portion of the life of Tim Jensen (Barry Watson) who is haunted by the childhood memory of seeing the Boogeyman take his father. We come to find that Tim has had counseling for the last fifteen years. Although he’s coping with it, he can’t help but not believe the whole story about how his dad ran off. He’s been told that that’s how it was until now, and he’s ready to find the truth.
Tim is told to revisit the house where the incident happened. Stay in the house for a while and he should feel all better. Bad advice. Rather than coming to terms with the past, he begins hallucinating and finds himself getting scared by nothing at all. Now the story takes a turn that fools you. It fooled me anyway. The filmmakers lead us to believe that suddenly the past and the present become intertwined and inversed in what can only be described as closet time portals. Tim starts traveling through a “system” of closets that lead to different houses that he’s been at in the last twelve hours or so. Although this temporarily improves the story tremendously, it has no point to it. It’s never explained to us what it all exactly means. And by the conclusion (which is ridiculous) I personally was very angry.
But, loyal readers, banging your hand on the theater seat will do nothing to ease the disappointment of the final sixty seconds of it all. Nothing will compensate for the lack of explaining on the part of the filmmakers. So I can only conclude that this is a film that was made by a group of people who had the technology to make a film with scary special effects, but had no film to use them in. They found one to use them in, and it’s called “Boogeyman”. Sadly, millions of Americans will thoroughly enjoy this. * ½