Whether lurking under a child’s bed or hiding in their closet, the Boogeyman is the most generic and hackneyed of mythic monsters, and thus it makes depressing sense that The Boogeyman is a stale compilation of clichés without a unique bone in its rickety body. Apt to startle only those who’ve never seen a scary movie before, Rob Savage’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1973 short story is as stereotypical as they come, so devoid of originality that the most pressing emotion it elicits is pity for its leads, Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Chris Messina (Air), who deserve better than to be put through this paint-by-numbers ringer.
As written by Mark Heyman and A Quiet Place’s Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, The Boogeyman (in theaters June 2) bares only the faintest resemblance to its source material, whose compact saga of a father telling a therapist about his children’s supernatural demises was a Tales from the Crypt-style study of parental terror, hate and guilt that built to a memorably creepy finale.
Those elements are nominally integrated into Savage’s big-screen version, yet in this case, the focus shifts to the shrink, Will Harper (Messina), and his two daughters Sadie (Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), who are still recovering from the recent car-accident death of their mother. Grief has infested their house, and while Will shrewdly notes that one of his patients is most afraid of “being alone,” he doesn’t see the same fear in himself, regardless of the fact that, in mourning, he’s emotionally cut himself off from his brood.
https://ift.tt/DFTSZga from The Daily Beast Latest Articles https://ift.tt/bIyL3AX
0 Comments