‘The Boogeyman’ Review: Monster Hash

“The Boogeyman,” extrapolated from a minor Seventies brief story by Stephen King, would possibly conceivably make sense to viewers with no entry to correct lighting or functioning home windows. For the remainder of us, although, this near-indecipherable film — as murky in plot and payoff as in setting — calls for such a complete suspension of rationality that its few scary moments battle to land.

Painted within the broadest of strokes, the story introduces the psychiatrist Will Harper (Chris Messina), his teenage daughter, Sadie (a memorable Sophie Thatcher), and her youthful sister, Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair). The latest demise of their mom is inflicting Sophie to battle in school and Sawyer to endure evening terrors. Will, unable to course of his loss, has merely withdrawn — till a haggard stranger (David Dastmalchian) walks into his workplace and claims a supernatural entity slaughtered his three kids. And, oh sure, he might need introduced it with him.

Unexpressed grief is fertile floor for all method of ghouls and goblins, however “The Boogeyman,” regardless of a promisingly skin-crawling opening, barely rakes the topsoil. Horrible occasions accumulate, inchoate photos whoosh previous, black webbing sprouts on partitions and ceilings. But the director, Rob Savage, is so stingy with element — What does the beastie need? Where did it come from? Is there a couple of? — that Russell Topal’s eerie sound design does a lot of the heavy lifting. Idiocies abound: Characters scream blue homicide, apparently unheard by relations in the identical home; a creature that feeds on darkness is battled by burning dozens of miniature candles as an alternative of, say, shining a flashlight.

Accordingly, squint and pressure as we’d, the monster by no means satisfyingly takes form, both visually or narratively. This isn’t a house that’s been invaded by a boogeyman; it’s a house that’s been expressly designed for one.

The Boogeyman
Rated PG-13 for a dangling corpse, a malevolent molar and an evil whatsit. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters.