|
|
Film
|
|
Boogeyman
You know what’s really scary? Raving about a horror film to your professional colleagues and then watching its aggregate RottenTomatoes.com rating tumble into the single digits.
Friday, February 4, 2005
By Todd Gilchrist
|
|
|
Screen Gems
Photo
|
|
Boogeystar
|
|
It’s always a tricky prospect to advertise your fanaticism for a movie before anyone else has had the chance to see it. Such was the case with Boogeyman, a damn fine little horror movie that I had the privilege of watching at the beginning of December, long before any official screenings would be scheduled.
So when Screen Gems, the film’s distributor, finally threw together a press day with the cast and crew, along with a last-minute screening, I made sure to vociferously recommend it to my professional colleagues. However, by the time the screening ended and the interviews were upon us, I suddenly seemed the film’s lone remaining fan.
Admittedly, the movie is an obvious mélange of numerous horror movie conventions: the loner who professes to have visions of creepy crawlies; the skeptical girlfriend; and, of course, requite things that go bump in the night. But strangely, as I watched it again, my certainty was firmly cemented that Boogeyman does in fact add up to more than the sum of its parts.
Barry Watson stars as Tim Jensen, a fear-stricken adult who returns to his childhood home to confront a lifetime of paranoia and suspicion. Stephen Kay (Get Carter) directs the movie from a script by Eric Kripke. And what they do with a desperately waning genre won my attention and respect, regardless how many others disagree.
|
|
Screen Gems
Photo
|
|
Boogeyart
|
|
|
In a terrific opening sequence, Tim shuffles off to bed as a child, frightened by the sight of a lump of clothing shaped like a man, a hanging mobile of a bird, and a particularly gruesome-looking doll. Rescued temporarily by his father (Charles Mesure), he soon discovers just how frightening the boogeyman can actually be: a mysterious force violently abducts his dad, slamming him four-square against the door frame before stealing him away into the darkest recesses of the closet. Flash fifteen years later, and Tim’s still so afraid of the dark he removes all of the cabinets in his apartment, buys a glass-door refrigerator and lays his mattress on the floor.
His upper-class girlfriend Jessica (Tory Mussett) doesn’t understand his idiosyncrasies, but loves him anyway. However, when she invites Tim to her family home to meet the parents (and of course engage in typically awkward dinner chit-chat about his own absent folks), he is assaulted by visions of his mother (an unrecognizable Lucy Lawless) that presage her untimely death. Returning home for the funeral, he reunites with his Uncle Mike (Philip Gordon) and agrees to spend a night in his childhood house, hoping to exorcise the demons that tormented him since the disappearance of his father years ago.
First, the shortcomings: Boogeyman is a creature feature, and quite frankly, the monster doesn’t really look all that good. As reported by the actors, CGI replaced a man in a suit who originally played the predator during shooting, and with so much set-up for his eventual reveal (amounting to about 80 of the film’s 86-minute running time), one wants this creature to be believable, whether he’s an actual entity or the figment of Tim’s imagination.
|
|
Screen Gems
Photo
|
|
Boogeypitch
|
|
|
Additionally, many of the expository scenes, particularly those with Tim’s girlfriend, play awkwardly. Mussett isn’t much of an actress, and she delivers her questioning lines with a stultifying lack of enthusiasm; one would think that she hasn’t actually experienced this kind of thing in real life (by which I mean a romantic relationship).
But strangely, once Emily Deschanel (older sister of Elf’s Zooey) steps on screen to provide Tim with a formidable female co-star, the film finds its rhythm. Deschanel’s previous credits include a supporting role in the dismal indie rom-com Easy and a brief role in Spider-Man 2, but the actress has talent, and knows how to create a credible atmosphere for her leading man’s increasing desperation to flourish. When Watson and Deschanel share screen time, sparks fly, and it’s easy to forget that the film is in fact a monster movie at all.
|
|
RottenTomatoes.com
Photo
|
|
Boogeyslam
|
|
|
Still, horror is the purpose here, whether by design (as the film’s title would designate) or by accident (as director Kay’s approach would suggest). Admiringly, Boogeyman actually plays by its own rules, and unfolds like a jacob’s ladder of alternate realities that work equally well as conventional man-versus-nature conflicts or something a bit more complex than your average creature feature. Imagine a synthesis between Spielberg’s Jaws (complete with eleventh-hour reveal) and Being John Malkovich (via collapsing boundaries between the physical and psychological world), and you’re halfway there.
Usually in movie like this, the filmmakers assemble a cast of nubile starlets and hunky leading men (all from UPN or the WB, natch), and then kill them off one by one in increasingly disgusting and imaginative fashion. Not so with Boogeyman; there are only four deaths in the film, and at least one of them isn’t caused by the boogeyman. The remainder of the cast lives and breathes on screen long enough for us actually to - gasp!- care about them, and even if we don’t quite get there, the concept of Tim’s fear should manage to appeal to even the most fearless viewer.
The boogeyman’s physical manifestations aren’t the design of some endlessly imaginative effects team, but the result of an expertly captured opening scene that shows what signposts augur the creature’s presence. Later, when they reappear, they do so without significant attention being given, adding to the seeming verisimilitude that Tim’s travails have with a realistic human plight.
That said and intellectualism aside, I was really scared - on more than one occasion - and not simply in the way that most horror movies these days accomplish that goal (e.g. assaulting the audience rather then engaging the characters). But what do I know? There are plenty of reviews that you’ll read this weekend singing its deficiencies, many of which came from people to whom I suggested that the film was good. But Boogeyman is a thinking-man’s thriller, a horror movie that cynical folks (like me) can watch and not be too offended by those failings to enjoy its successes.
And while it may not be an artistic triumph along the lines of, say, Being John Malkovich, or even an effortless crowd pleaser like Jaws, it sure pleased me. Even without the crowd.
|
|
|
|
|
 Email
|
 Print
|
|
|
|
|
|