Final a Terror for Boogeyman

We’ve all heard of The Boogeyman. He’s the ghost of all ghosts, a malevolent presence laying wait under the bed or within the deep recesses of the closet ready to whisk children away to swift and sudden deaths. He’s a demonic myth, the flipside of Santa Claus, a gory fairy tale waiting to rip out a spine or tear off a limb in the blink of an eyelash.

Countless horror movies have used the specter of The Boogeyman to frighten audiences. Most notably, Halloween made this creature flesh in the shape of one Michael Myers, writer/director John Carpenter forever changing the horror landscape for better and worse with his 1978 classic. That movie was lightning in a bottle; taut, tight, twisted and scary, Halloween is the quintessential stalker flick, countless sequels and pale imitations not diluting its intoxicating power to illicit nightmares in even the stoutest heart.

It would figure, then, that Boogeyman, the first movie to put the actual mythical killer front and center, spends most of its running time conjuring up fond memories of Carpenter’s classic frightmare. Opening with the mostly off-camera death of a beloved father figure, over the next sixty minutes or so director Stephen T. Kay (Get Carter) has the gall to use a viewer’s imagination of what lies within the unseen to generate scares.

And for a while there it works. Sure, actor Barry Watson (the WB’s Seventh Heaven) tends to run through the picture with a look of constant constipation, and yes supporting actresses Emily Deschanel (Spider-Man 2) and Tory Mussett (Peter Pan) have as much screen presence as a gnat gnawing at plywood, but for a good portion of the picture this isn’t the problem it should be. (That said, what exactly is Xena star Lucy Lawless doing here? Does she need a paycheck quite this bad?) The whole thing is shot by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski (Saved!) wonderfully, and the sound effects and design are unsettlingly pitch-perfect. Technically, Boogeyman borders on brilliance, generating jumps, twitters and shrieks like a good horror movie should.

But when a creepy omnipotent little girl (is there any other kind of late?) played irritatingly by Skye McCole Bartusiak (Against the Ropes) arrives, things slowly begin to fall apart and the lack of any character development begins to play a factor. And yet, it isn’t until the absurdly over-the-top final that things completely fall to pieces. Sure, it’s a deliriously frenetic piece of bravura filmmaking with time flowing back and forth and people disappearing through closet doors and from underneath beds, but so what? Kay and writers Eric Kripke (WB’s short-lived Tarzan), Juliet Snowden and Stiles White (the cartoon series Da Boom Crew) have no clue where to go, instead piling nonsense upon nonsense until any sense is nowhere to be seen.

Really, I’m mostly lost for words. To say it becomes terrible is almost a compliment to all things terrible. What I do know is what started out as a nifty little excursion into horror, recalling the glory days of filmmakers like Carpenter, Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street) and even producer Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead), deteriorates inexplicably into an unwatchable mess of epic proportions. Worse, it’s the second horror film in almost as many weeks (Hide and Seek being the other) to do so, falling to pieces even more completely and suddenly than that Robert DeNiro/Dakota Fanning fright flick ever could.

It’s awful, but even worse it’s a waste, because for a while there Boogeyman was really getting under my skin. Granted, by the time the end credits started to roll it still was. Luckily, a little lotion and that pesky irritation should go away nicely.

Film Rating: ê1/2  (out of 4)