the Mind’s Chew Toy

Seems like horror movies are coming out faster and faster these days. After the success of movies like The Ring and fear dot com years ago, the number of horror movies per year seems to keep increasing.

But these aren’t the horror movies you remember, these horror movies are more psychological than gory and are strongly influenced by the Asian movies of the last few years. Boogeyman is the latest in this new breed of horror films.

After seeing other recent horror films (such as The Ring and The Grudge (2004)), Heather and I were interested in seeing what Boogeyman had to offer. The previews for Boogeyman mixed the Asian influence with a little bit of Freddy nostalgia (the counting the main character does in the preview will remind people of the nursery rhyme in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series). This mix made the movie peek our interest enough that we wanted to check it out when it hit DVD. So, would Boogeyman be worth the rental cost or does the Asian influence lose too much in translation?

Barry Watson, who is most recognizably from 7th Heaven, takes on the leading role in Boogeyman. He does a decent job in his first attempt in a lead movie role. He tries to embrace the character, maybe a little overzealously, imbuing him with such an overwhelming paranoia throughout the film, that it’s sometimes hard for the viewer to see past that. As the end of the film nears, however, he is able to help pull the viewer more into the scenes.

The rest of the characters, with the exception of a brief sequence with young Skye McCole Bartusiak, don’t really contribute much to the film. They only seem to be there to provide a backdrop for the events that take place and to provide what every horror movie needs: cannon fodder.

Boogeyman’s plot is where the real Asian influence is felt. Rather than the gore-fest most people expect from horror films, Boogeyman goes the more psychological route. The film revolves more around the emotions and circumstances arising from a childhood trauma, rather than some psycho killer on the loose. It’s definitely a more introspective way to portray horror. This less gore, more attention approach to horror film making has really changed the genre as a whole. It’s always scarier to imagine what’s hiding just out of sight than any special effect Hollywood could produce. Boogeyman recognizes this and does its best to keep the monster more in your imagination than on screen.

When the monster finally does appear on screen, it doesn’t disappoint. Some films (like Contact), have wonderful build up but then fall apart when their monsters turn out to be so much less than the audience expects. Thankfully, Boogeyman has a good team of special affects artists behind it, so the viewer definitely won’t be disappointed when evil shows its face.

Boogeyman probably would have been a much better film had it come out before this new influx of horror films with Asian influence. It’s still a decent enough movie which makes good use of the viewers imagination and doesn’t disappoint when the creature is revealed…but it doesn’t really show us much more than we’ve seen by this point.

It’s worth a rental, but this thriller probably isn’t worth owning, as it doesn’t come close to reaching the psychological scare of something like Saw (2004). It does, however, have enough going for it that it won’t fall, forgotten, to the back of the closet.