Review: Boogeyman


Dopey brothers Danny Horn and Gabriel Steele inadvertently unleash hell when some silly roughhousing at the ‘ol Skinner residence leads to a monster-in-the-attic being released, which promptly (well, after the boys have left) kills Old Man Skinner himself. Their dad, the local sheriff (Eddie McClintock, from SyFy’s “Warehouse 13”) is charged with solving the crime, along with his partner Amy Bailey, who has a family secret to reveal. He also has to try and prevent his two inquisitive kids from becoming monster fodder, as well. The monster, for its part, goes around picking off random people- stoners, lesbians etc. But what it seems to really be after is Steele. Emma Samms plays the small town police chief. 

 

Not every SyFy movie ‘fracking’ sucks, and this 2012 film from director Jeffery Scott Lando and writer David Reed isn’t bad at all. It’s just generic, mis-titled (“Cain and Abel” would’ve been more appropriate) and kind of a “Pumpkinhead” rip-off when you think about it. It certainly has an 80s horror vibe throughout (not necessarily a good 80s horror vibe, though), although obviously much less violent. That said, it’s still pretty gory for a SyFy flick, so that was kinda nice. Rather than a literal boogeyman, this one’s your standard slasher/revenge deal. I gotta dock points for the two lesbians dying (nice to see SyFy’s TV fetish of lesbians, ala “Lost Girl”, “Defiance”, and “Warehouse 13” finally extending to their film output) but the pervert spying on them getting to live. That’s just not fair.

 

It’s not scary but there’s some nice use of fog and darkness at times, which I appreciated. A rather dumpy looking Emma Samms so much time trying and failing to keep an American (Canadian?) accent that her performance as a whole suffers. Then again, at least the cast isn’t filled to the brim with Eastern Europeans for a change, so maybe I should just shut up and appreciate what we’ve got. Eddie McClintock fares best as the smart-alec protagonist, whilst Danny Horn and Gabriel Steele are merely OK as his sons.

 

Can we please put an end to films with “Boogeyman” in the title? This isn’t awful, but c’mon, enough’s enough. The link to anything in the film here was tenuous at best. I mean, it was kind of a decomposed, reanimated corpse. “The Mummy” would’ve been a more accurate title and even that would be wrong. Anyway, you could do a lot worse than this (the other “Boogeyman” for instance), no matter what the title is.

 

Rating: C+

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