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Boogeyman is the story of how one man’s
imagination murders countless innocent children. We first meet Tim as a
young boy, his father tells him tales of the Boogeyman and occasionally locks him in the closet under the stairs as some sort
of bizarre trust exercise. So Tim is naturally a little jumpy and his freaky
toys aren’t helping. He’s scared to fall asleep. His dad comes in to comfort him or to perhaps lock him in another closet but the Boogeyman sucks dad into
the closet never to be seen again. Flash forward 15 years, Tim has convinced
himself, through years of therapy, that there is no Boogeyman and that dad really ran out on the family and Tim made
up the Boogeyman to cope with the pain. Just the same he has developed a
paralyzing phobia of closets, doors, doorways, doorknobs and possibly sinks… also the dark underbelly of beds and the
dark in general, of course. Now just take a moment and imagine what your life
would be like if you were terrified of doors, now imagine that your girlfriend is an insufferable bitch and you are beginning
to understand the complex animal that is Tim.
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| SHOCKING! |
Ok, so next I was going to continue my retelling
of the film. About how he has a vision of his dying mother (Xena in a cameo and
the worst old person effects makeup ever), finds out she’s dead, returns to his hometown where his childhood therapist
tells him to spend just one night in his family’s terrifying home and all the hijinks that ensue, but this movie was
like Chinese water torture and it seems inhumane to drag you all through that. For
a movie about the power of imagination this movie shows a criminal lack of it. In
many ways it’s just a laundry list of horror movie clichés that all fall flat.
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| TERROR! |
This movie is aggressively over directed. There’s wind and leaves and slow motion in every scene. When he finally gets to the house the camera zips and zooms through the halls and nothing happens for 45
minutes. Tim stares at doorknobs, oh is he going to open that door? Tim stares at doors, oh what could be behind it?
Water drips menacingly into the sink. Tim has a five-minute freak
out in a closet. Is he being attacked by the Boogeyman? No, he’s just a complete spaz! As much as I hate Tim
for his incessant anxious staring I still feel bad for the guy, nearly everyone else in this entire movie is the most insufferable
asshole you have ever met. Tim’s girlfriend and her awful family, Tim’s
parents, Tim’s “I don’t have time for your pain” therapist all horrible people you wish would die. But there’s really no carnage in this film, it’s a PG-13 flick and all
that leaves room for is staring at doors and leaves in the wind.
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| SHOCKING TERROR! |
Basically what I am trying to tell you is
that this movie is horrible. Horrible and boring on a level I don’t even
have the words to convey. I wanted to describe the movie in order to illustrate
how very much it sucked and how deep it hurt me but all I seem to be doing is causing you pain. Look this is the end of the movie, I’m going to tell you the end and just save you some time to make
it up to you. The movie going fucking crackers in the last half hour, as though
the movie realizes that it’s been boring you for an hour and thinks that confusing you will give it the chance to get
away. There really is a Boogeyman and he’s just the personification of
all Tim’s fears given power and shape through Tim’s childhood toys (a plasma ball, a bird mobile and an action
figure which looks like Freddy Kruger as a member of Right Said Fred). So Tim
destroys the Boogeyman by breaking his toys (never mind the subplot about the dead little girl’s dad that he has to
bolt down a chair and face the Boogeyman, because the movie forgets about that too, this movie is fucking crackers I am telling
you). Seriously that defeats the Boogeyman.
Which means Tim is actually responsible for countless murders. Tim's
dad? Killed by Tim’s imagination.
Tim’s girlfriend? Killed by Tim’s imagination. Tim’s uncle? Killed by Tim’s imagination. That
creepy little girl and her dad? Killed by Tim’s imagination. Dozens of children, missing for years? Killed by Tim’s
imagination. Way to go Tim.
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| ::sigh:: what is it now Tim? |
BONUS: What I though the real plot of Boogeyman was before the movie revealed itself as a
total sham.
I’m watching this crappy movie and
I just can’t believe it’s as bad and stupid as it actually is so I started to think that maybe just maybe this
movie was a little smarter than that. My guess was that there was no Boogeyman
and that Tim is actually a paranoid schizophrenic and is imagining the Boogeyman to protect his fragile mind from the
fact that Tim himself is murdering these people and then blacking out. Isn’t
that cool? Watch this movie (don’t really) and pretend that is the real
plot, it fits in perfectly and could make for an interesting movie.
Note: In the original
version of this review I kept calling Tim 'Matt', whatever.
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