The real horror in 'The Boogeyman' is how generic it is

Following the death of their mother, Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) try their best to cope with the loss, while their psychiatrist father Will (Chris Messina) walls himself off with his work. However, when Will is visited by a disturbed patient (David Dastmalchian) who speaks about a monster that lurks in the shadows that killed his children, the family soon finds themselves visited by the same monster...

Mental anguish and horror have been linked together for as long as people have been afraid of something uncertain and needed to anthropomorphise it in order to understand it. This is something Stephen King - who wrote the original short story that 'The Boogeyman' is based on - understood very well. In the case of 'The Shining', he mined his own fears of his alcoholism into a story about possession by evil. In the case of 'Misery', his fear of addiction and his anguish over his creative failures were turned into Annie Wilkes. Yet in 'The Boogeyman' and this adaptation by the writers of 'A Quiet Place' and 'The Skeleton Twins', it's taking grief and loss, and turning it into the all-pervasive Boogeyman.

Again, this isn't anything unique. In fact, just very recently you had horror movies like 'Barbarian' and 'Smile' take on this topic and turn them into effective, creepy horrors. Where 'The Boogeyman' fails - not spectacularly, but still fails nonetheless - is that it's just too generic to make a real impact. The concept itself is too lazily defined, and while simplicity can often bring about a spartan elegance in horrors, here it just comes off as half-written. What's more, it tries to rope in family drama, teenage coming-of-age drama, and then a finale that's lifted almost entirely from 'Aliens'.

Rob Savage's previous works, 'Host' and 'Dashcam', were both focused around taking mundane footage and turning them into horrors. In the case of 'Host', it was a Zoom meeting while 'Dashcam' was obviously based on dashcam footage. Yet in 'The Boogeyman', there's no real zest or flavour to any of it. Much of the action takes place inside the family home, which has a serious damp problem and issues with squeaky doors. The real horror is in how much damp costs to fix, not what's going on here. Through pretty tepid jumpscares and some overbearing music, 'The Boogeyman' does try to elicit a few scares - but it's ultimately kind of bland and forgettable.

Chris Messina is a gifted actor, as is Sophie Thatcher of 'Yellowjackets' fame, yet neither of them really have any standout moment in 'The Boogeyman' where those gifts are used effectively. Messina, for his part, plays it straight down the line while Thatcher seems to vacillate between family drama and final girl avenger at different points. David Dastmalchian, always a familiar sight in horrors, impresses in a single scene but then doesn't get a chance to creep his way back into the movie. The gaggle of teenage girls that surrounds Sophie Thatcher is straight out of a cliche, while the young Vivien Lyra Blair does well in the scheme of things but is eclipsed by both her on-screen father and sister.

Even though it's based on one of Stephen King's lesser-known works, 'The Boogeyman' feels like it could have been written by anyone. There's a blandness about it that's impossible to ignore, and the concept is too thin to be satisfying to either horror fans, King completionists, or just general cinema audiences looking for a thrill on a Friday night.