Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, and David Dastmalchian

Directed by Rob Savage

20th Century, in cinemas now

 

Still reeling from the tragic death of their mother, siblings find themselves plagued by a sadistic presence in their house. 

Stephen King’s 1973 short story The Boogeyman, collected in his Night Shift anthology, makes its feature debut after previous short-form adaptations, here helmed by The Host’s Rob Savage. But somewhere along the way, the best of the source material has been jettisoned, leaving us with something that’s competently made but ultimately unmemorable.

When I first read The Boogeyman as a teenager, the ending caught me by complete surprise. It’s the sort of story where the shorthand description is ‘The one where x happens’, and for me, that is the reason why it works as a short, sharp shock to the senses.

Most of the King story is here, condensed and delivered within the first 15 minutes, meaning that most of the movie’s narrative has been created by screenwriters Scott Beck (A Quiet Place), Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) and Mark Heyman (Black Swan). Right to the end, I expected the important bit from the short story to find its way into the climax, but it’s fudged, and different. Imagine making a film of Robert Bloch’s Psycho and not having a shower scene.

I’m not singling this out as a unique example of one of King’s short stories being changed too much from its source on its journey to feature status – the video shelves of the 1990s had plenty of product where King’s name wasn’t always synonymous with quality – I just can’t understand the choices made by the filmmakers.

What you do get is a mild (PG-13 rated in the States, 15 in the UK) monster movie with a handful of decent jump scares, but nothing new in either the creature design or resolution. It might work as a gateway movie to the teen who’s just discovering the tropes of the horror movie, but it’s depressing to see that the schoolgirls in this movie are just as bitchy as Carrie White’s contemporaries in Brian De Palma’s classic 1976 movie based on King’s Carrie. I guess the message is the same – some mean girls are scarier than any monster in the closet – which frankly isn’t that progressive.

Verdict: Competent but uninspired, the best bit of King’s short story has been lost, which is a bold but bizarre thing to do. 5/10

Nick Joy