Product Details

• Actors: Barry Watson, Emily Deschanel
• Directors: Stephen Kay
• Format: NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (231 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1404935207

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Since movies began, thrillers have depended on a door just slightly ajar, with a narrow slit of darkness that promises to hold your worst fears. In the first five minutes of Boogeyman, a young boy's father is violently sucked into a closet, scarring the boy so badly that he grows up to be blank-faced Barry Watson (7th Heaven), who plays Tim, an editor at a newspaper or a magazine or something. Tim, to impress his girlfriend's parents, wears a coat and tie but doesn't shave his sexy stubble. A premonition of his mother's death drives him back to his childhood home so he can exorcise his phobias. From there...well, there's lots of atmospheric cinematography, regular jolts of loud music, and many quick edits. What actually happens is pretty obscure and, really, not worth unobscuring. The obsession with doors and doorknobs verges on the avant-garde. Also featuring a brief glimpse of Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess), wearing some truly terrible old-age makeup. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I thought the "Boogeyman" was supposed to keep me awake, February 5, 2005

By 

Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews

If there's one trend in horror movies that really needs to go away it's the Loud Sudden Noise, aka the "SHREEENK!"

I mean that overamplified, more-annoying-than-scary racket that jumps from the speakers during a thriller whenever anything mildly startling happens. It usually sounds like a cello being sliced in two by a guillotine and it's a sure sign that a movie doesn't have any honest scares.

You know the drill:

The hero cautiously backs into a dark room and bumps into - SHREEENK! - a coat rack.

The heroine closes a medicine cabinet and in the mirror - SHREEENK! - sees the ghost of her great-aunt.

Few recent horror flicks have relied as heavily on the "SHREEENK!" as "Boogeyman," which is often atmospheric but mostly silly and boring.

Following a childhood run-in with the title character, magazine editor Tim (Barry Watson) is left with a crippling fear of closets and other dark storage spaces. He's a mess. At 23, he still stops in for treatment at the kid's ward of his neighborhood psychiatric hospital.

"Look around you," his doctor finally tells him. "There are only children here."

I fear that scene isn't nearly as moving as the writers intended, but it sets the tone because Tim spends most of the movie walking around his dark old house wigging out - in fact, a good 60 percent of the film's running time is devoted to scenes in which he approaches sinister-looking doors/staircases/barns really... really... really... slowly (just before the "SHREEENK!").

The rest of the movie involves Tim doubting his sanity and awkwardly courting his childhood sweetheart (Emily Deschanel, who isn't given much to do but still manages to be the best thing in the movie). Eventually, they battle the fabled Boogie Man, and I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure their conflict ends as the result of a complete lack of ideas.

This is one "Boogeyman" that won't keep many viewers awake. That task falls to the "SHREEENK!"

48 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Complete Waste of Time and Money, June 6, 2005

By 

Graboidz (Westminster, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Boogeyman (Special Edition) (DVD)

You know what would have made "Boogeyman" scarier? Just about anything! Truly nothing happens in this movie after the first five minutes. The lead guy walks around teary-eyed and looking mysterious at half opened doors or ceiling tiles......and then.....nothing. Don't waste your time with this thing, if you want something that sets a pretty good eerie mood, get "Fear of the Dark" instead. It's shot on almost no budget, with no stars of any kind, but at least "Fear of the Dark" gives the viewer some kind of pay-off, and packs at least a minimal fright factor.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars TONS of missed potential......, June 27, 2005

By 

H. A Huffman "haumf" (Mt. Prospect, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boogeyman (Special Edition) (DVD)

Boogeyman could have been a very scary film except that the director and producer wanted that all-important PG13 rating. This is killing the horror movie as an art form; Boogeyman is a clear case of shocks traded in for an imaginary audience who likes bloodless horror movies (like "The Ring").

This movie sets up an interesting story, then does almost nothing with it. And the "surprise twist" in the film was a surprise only to the 5 year olds in the audience taken to this film by their baby-sitterless parents.

I miss the old "Hellraiser" days when horror films strived for an "R" rating and wore it as a badge of honor. I hope Hollywood will start making films like that again.