The Boogeyman (2023) Dir: Rob Savage
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This Rob Savage film is one of those horrors that I came into with pretty low expectations. It looked like it would be a standard, mediocre, jump-scare fest, which it was.
Based on Stephen King's short story of the same name, this film definitely had potential, but instead ended up being as devoid of any real quality or uniqueness as the majority of other blockbuster horrors that get churned out year-on-year.
The story failed to interest me at all, it had so little going for it. A weak premise, very little in the way of backstory or explanation, unanswered questions and an ending which completely undermines the film's climax.
Things were not helped by how dislikeable virtually every character was in nearly every seen. And I don't just mean in terms of their personality, it was how they responded to the events of the film.
The characters seemed in complete denial of the situation, again and again. Or, alternatively, they were totally useless and unwilling to actually do anything, until maybe the last twenty minutes.
Furthermore, the visual effects were inconsistent to say the least. The CGI ironically looked at its best when the scenes were dark and you couldn't really see any of it. The rest of the time it looked awful.
Sophie Thatcher tried so hard to be better than the film's writing, but to say she was fighting upstream would be an understatement. She did, in spite of the film, produce a semi-decent performance.
Vivien Lyra Blair was the most likable, and seemingly intelligent, character in the entire film, baring in mind she's a young child. Chris Messina could've been a pretty good character, but he was so underutilised and wasted that he became essentially an afterthought.
David Dastmalchian was excellent, for his what felt like 2 minutes of screentime. Him aside, the only other actor worthy of mentioning were Marin Ireland and Madison Hu, both of whom were middling at best.
Overall, this was as good as I had expected it to be, which is to say, not at all. It had a couple of decent jumps, but the film relied too heavily on those to create any fear in its audience - a trick tried too often and too poorly to be at all memorable.
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