Boogeyman (2012)
A single dad cop in a small town and his female partner are called to the scene of the death of a mean recluse. Shortly after, a number of bizarre deaths around town begin to occur at the hands of a big supernatural disfigured monster that is actually a demonic form of Cain, of Cain and Abel of the bible, who has needed a "brother" to be his keeper ever since he killed Abel, and now that his previous keeper has died, he's free to search for someone worthy of being his new "brother".
REVIEW: It was really interesting to see SyFy tackle a different beast (so to
speak) with Boogeyman, opting to go instead with a slower,
atmospheric, supernatural teen slasher style movie as opposed to their usual fare of
killer animals, giant monsters, and global disasters. Sure, since this movie originally aired in 2012 they've done many more similar style movies, with varying degrees of success, with Haunted High (aka Ghostquake), American Horror House (aka Sorority Horror House), Scarecrow, Ghost Storm, and Grave Halloween just to name a few off the top of my head, but at the time this was kind of a First for them in this genre, at least to my knowledge.
Sadly, the overall end result was not as good as it should have been.
To start things off, I actually really enjoyed the biblical angle on the origin of the
Boogeyman here, with it actually being an immortal Cain, cursed to wander the Earth forever as a decaying corpse due to him murdering his brother Abel as told in the Bible, forever seeking a new keeper, aka "brother" to keep him company and to replace the one he killed. I felt that was something new and unique to the 'Boogeyman
Genre', and was one of the few aspects that kept my interest throughout,
especially watching this now, since the awesome TV show Supernatural has been dealing with
a very similar storyline for the last season or so and both this movie and Supernatural deal pretty heavily with the Mark of Cain and various lore surrounding that.
The biggest error the movie makes though, is that they really tried to go for nerve-racking scary, but they totally did themselves a disservice by showing the Boogeyman creature/killer/whatever, in-full, during broad daylight, within the first 5 minutes of the movie. I know SyFy has an audience to keep, and they're famous for having a pretty strict set of rules (must of which are kinda stupid) that their movies have to follow, but if that's the way they're going to go about it than it's best to not even attempt to try making things scary because by doing that, they're revealing way too much way too soon and thus nothing that follows ends up being nearly as scary as it could have been without that proper build-up and slow reveal. Plus having already seen the Boogeyman in broad daylight in all its badly-done makeup effects glory also totally takes away from the fear they attempt to establish during the rest of the movie, as they could have better hid the bad costuming and such in the shadows of the darker scenes. And it's a shame that the look of the Boogeyman turned out so bad in-practice because the design is actually kind of a nice creepy one, but just seeing it all done, in-motion, looked really cheap, rushed, and badly done.
That's not to say there weren’t some decent creepy scenes though – Two scenes in particular, one with a group of teens partying in the woods when the Boogeyman decides to crash it and a scene with a classic 'Boogeyman under the bed' angle are easily the two standout scenes in the creepy department here, it's just they could have been so much better (and other scenes that kind of dropped the ball a bit could have been a bit better as well) had we not already seen good solid long-lasting daytime looks at the Boogeyman creature. If it had been kept hidden and restrained to just the darker scenes and the shadows, these scenes would have been so much more effective. Luckily the one area the movie does excel at is the blood and guts department, as there was some pretty good gore throughout, especially for a TV movie. Taking the cake would have to be a really gory decapitation during the Boogeyman's assault on the police station, and a scene where a little girl sees the creature rip her mom apart in her bedroom, spraying the room with blood.
Another detractor to the whole affair though is that most of the characters are not very likeable and most of the actors are not very good. Amy Bailey as the rookie cop was hardly ever around when she was needed and it was obvious she was keeping a secret from the get-go, the drunk old guy that refuses to help everyone, the mean old hermit that the kids deal with near the beginning, the annoying bratty self-centered kid characters themselves, the cops at the police station that refuse to believe the kids, the Chief of Police played by Emma Samms that seemed to have a stick up her ass the entire time, pretty much everyone here was completely unlikable, with the sole exception being Eddie McClintock's character - he totally stole the movie as the wisecracking goofy father and cop that always manages to have something funny to say. Sadly, that's also exactly how he played his character on the TV show Warehouse 13, so it was constantly taking me out of the movie and making me think of that show instead of this movie, so in that regards I would have preferred to see him play the character differently then he did, but as things are in terms of characters I at least enjoyed him whenever he was on-screen. And admittedly, Emma Samms as the Chief of Police, while unlikable for most of the runtime, definitely had me come around on her character in her final moments before her death scene.
Kudos to SyFy for trying something different and new at the time, and while the effort is appreciated I feel the end result wasn't as good as it could have been. The movie itself isn't that bad, as there is enough decent-to-good stuff to make it worth at least a one-time watch - for instance the basic premise is interesting, the gore is really good, there is indeed a few standout scenes, and Eddie McClintock's whole schtick is always entertaining to watch - but the rewatchability factor with this one is pretty nil, and the whole package isn't nearly as good as it could have been with only a few small tweaks that could have had a large positive impact.
As for how you can actually watch Boogeyman for yourself outside of holding your breath for a rare and possibly non-existant SyFy re-airing, sadly it's never been released on DVD or BluRay anywhere in the world as far as I can tell, however if you currently reside in or are visiting Brazil or Mexico you can access it via their Netflix, or if you have a way of accessing a different country's Netflix (I won't say how here but a quick Google search will yield you good results there) than just sign onto Brazil's or Mexico's as that is, as far as I can tell, currently the only way to catch this one now.
The biggest error the movie makes though, is that they really tried to go for nerve-racking scary, but they totally did themselves a disservice by showing the Boogeyman creature/killer/whatever, in-full, during broad daylight, within the first 5 minutes of the movie. I know SyFy has an audience to keep, and they're famous for having a pretty strict set of rules (must of which are kinda stupid) that their movies have to follow, but if that's the way they're going to go about it than it's best to not even attempt to try making things scary because by doing that, they're revealing way too much way too soon and thus nothing that follows ends up being nearly as scary as it could have been without that proper build-up and slow reveal. Plus having already seen the Boogeyman in broad daylight in all its badly-done makeup effects glory also totally takes away from the fear they attempt to establish during the rest of the movie, as they could have better hid the bad costuming and such in the shadows of the darker scenes. And it's a shame that the look of the Boogeyman turned out so bad in-practice because the design is actually kind of a nice creepy one, but just seeing it all done, in-motion, looked really cheap, rushed, and badly done.
That's not to say there weren’t some decent creepy scenes though – Two scenes in particular, one with a group of teens partying in the woods when the Boogeyman decides to crash it and a scene with a classic 'Boogeyman under the bed' angle are easily the two standout scenes in the creepy department here, it's just they could have been so much better (and other scenes that kind of dropped the ball a bit could have been a bit better as well) had we not already seen good solid long-lasting daytime looks at the Boogeyman creature. If it had been kept hidden and restrained to just the darker scenes and the shadows, these scenes would have been so much more effective. Luckily the one area the movie does excel at is the blood and guts department, as there was some pretty good gore throughout, especially for a TV movie. Taking the cake would have to be a really gory decapitation during the Boogeyman's assault on the police station, and a scene where a little girl sees the creature rip her mom apart in her bedroom, spraying the room with blood.
Another detractor to the whole affair though is that most of the characters are not very likeable and most of the actors are not very good. Amy Bailey as the rookie cop was hardly ever around when she was needed and it was obvious she was keeping a secret from the get-go, the drunk old guy that refuses to help everyone, the mean old hermit that the kids deal with near the beginning, the annoying bratty self-centered kid characters themselves, the cops at the police station that refuse to believe the kids, the Chief of Police played by Emma Samms that seemed to have a stick up her ass the entire time, pretty much everyone here was completely unlikable, with the sole exception being Eddie McClintock's character - he totally stole the movie as the wisecracking goofy father and cop that always manages to have something funny to say. Sadly, that's also exactly how he played his character on the TV show Warehouse 13, so it was constantly taking me out of the movie and making me think of that show instead of this movie, so in that regards I would have preferred to see him play the character differently then he did, but as things are in terms of characters I at least enjoyed him whenever he was on-screen. And admittedly, Emma Samms as the Chief of Police, while unlikable for most of the runtime, definitely had me come around on her character in her final moments before her death scene.
Kudos to SyFy for trying something different and new at the time, and while the effort is appreciated I feel the end result wasn't as good as it could have been. The movie itself isn't that bad, as there is enough decent-to-good stuff to make it worth at least a one-time watch - for instance the basic premise is interesting, the gore is really good, there is indeed a few standout scenes, and Eddie McClintock's whole schtick is always entertaining to watch - but the rewatchability factor with this one is pretty nil, and the whole package isn't nearly as good as it could have been with only a few small tweaks that could have had a large positive impact.
As for how you can actually watch Boogeyman for yourself outside of holding your breath for a rare and possibly non-existant SyFy re-airing, sadly it's never been released on DVD or BluRay anywhere in the world as far as I can tell, however if you currently reside in or are visiting Brazil or Mexico you can access it via their Netflix, or if you have a way of accessing a different country's Netflix (I won't say how here but a quick Google search will yield you good results there) than just sign onto Brazil's or Mexico's as that is, as far as I can tell, currently the only way to catch this one now.
5/10 Rooms in the Psych Ward
Yes, thanks for generous and candid comments. I then happened to watch the movie from a non-traditional source- it's in Canadian French but actually found English subtitles rather easily. The movie is entertaining enough that you stay focussed, but it's definitely not worth breaking your cojones to find it- That is, unless you're totally dedicated to watching every B gore movie on the planet. It's filmed (in 2012) in a suitably misty VHS -style format and the color remains strong. It hasn't faded, and the focus, is acceptable.
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