A Review by Phil Calabro
2005, Screen Gems, Dir. Stephen T. Kay - Starring Barry Watson, Emily Deschanel, Skye McCole Bartusiak, Lucy Lawless, Tory Mussett, Robyn Malcolm, Charles Mesure, Louise Wallace, Michael Saccente, Philip Gordon, Ivan Kemp, Caden St. Clair, Andrew Glover
I question the integrity of executives at Ghost House Pictures, the small subsidary of Sony Pictures that is run by slightly-legendary 'Evil Dead' director Sam Raimi. What is their exact definition of an excusable horror film? I mean, it's obvious that every single film should have the basics - cohesion, transition, substance, and in this case, aversion. I understand that a sucker is born every minute, but it has reached the point where it is an utter shame for moviegoers to splurge their money on watery, unattractive movies like 'Boogeyman'. The movie overstays its welcome, after producing mechanical shocks that - in retrospect - are nothing but a series of purposeless events that are neither caused by the Boogeyman's doings nor respective to the storyline. It's generally an unwatchable film, a vacuous attempt at getting some hack writer to sketch up a half-baked story about the childhood myth. Hollow and slow, 'Boogeyman' feels more like the dust bunnies under your bed than the monster.
Tim Jensen (Watson) is a traumatized young man who works as an associate editor in a popular magazine. He is scarred by the horrific - not to mention in a twisted manner, unbelievably silly - death of his father, who was sucked into the closet and...consumed...by the Boogeyman? Well, as much as I remember, it looks like a big tornado swarmed out of the closet - I guess that means it crushed him in some sense. Anyway - he and his girlfriend (Mussett) live happily together, and they are about to spend Thanksgiving together until he gets a phonecall that his mother is dead. Although his mother is a completely useless yet necessary plot device to rekindle the chemistry between Tim and the Boogeyman, he decides to spend one more night in the haunted house that he feared for so many years. He meets up with another useless character, Mary (Lawless) - and encounter the monster. Now here's my question - Tim must've lived in the house must longer after his father's death, so why hasn't the Boogeyman taken advantage since? Oh right, because then the movie wouldn't exist.
I guess I shouldn't even expect a good acting job from anyone who accepted a role in 'Sorority Boys'. Barry Watson puts effort in the role of Tim, but when you have such a dumpy plotline like this, it comes across as unintentionally stupid. There isn't really a lot more to say about his acting job, but it's really pathetic to watch the ways his character interacts with others. About halfway through the movie, we have the obligatory plot element that features the little girl who seems to know more about the horror than any of the other characters. In a style reminiscent to last month's 'Hide and Seek', there are scenes between the two characters that rely on two methods - the first which is to say absolutely nothing to one another assuming that there's some sort of connection between the two, and the second is to say a few catchphrases like 'count to five, it helps me'. I wretch at these elements constantly, it just makes me wonder what the average moviegoer thinks of those characters - do they consider them to be part of the plot, or are they just filler? Mr. Raimi has some questions to answer.
As I had said before, the majority of scares are not even the Boogeyman's doings. I couldn't really tell if the screenwriter was trying to hint at the psychological aspects of the mythical creep, but considering the quality of the film, I'm pretty sure it was solely created to freak people out. The ending is inconclusive, as every movie of the genre is, as well as too confused. Much like 'Matrix Revolutions', the first hour and ten minutes are set up with depictions of boring battles and other vapid events that eventually simmer into the disoriented slam-bang finale that is (a) too loud, (b) too quick, and (c) too stupid. People die, people live, and the Boogeyman's gone until Sam Raimi makes another million off his next movie - "Sasquatch: The Edition that Doesn't Star Lance Henriksen." (By the way, that's sarcasm. I believe he's in the works for 'The Grudge 2')
There's more to entertainment than a couple of well-planned jolt moments - it requires subject matter, for one thing. I don't really know what direction this movie was supposed to be facing, but whatever way it was, I still didn't like it. Never really grasping any hold of the audience's attention, it's either too smoky to understand its psychological implications or too stupid to enjoy.
