Boogeyman review: A Stephen King horror movie with Dark Tower vibes

Stephen King devoted more than 4,000 pages to detailing the fantasy world of The Dark Tower, and yet by the end of Roland Deschain’s 10-novel journey to the tower, there was still space shrouded in shadow. Todash space.

Before I understood “cosmic horror” as the defining mode of H.P. Lovecraft and King were able to mesmerize me by promising a dark world between the universes where titans were lurking, while a few unfortunate souls lived an eternity in gloomy hell. The idea of todash creeps into other King books — MistThe following are some examples of how to get started: Buick 8 are biggies — but it’s always looming in the late Dark Tower novels. As Roland, his sons and their and ka-tet, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, eventually learn, ancient advanced societies of Roland’s “Mid-World” parallel universe found ways to breach the fabric between realities and reach the todash space, and every being who beheld it seems to have agreed that it’s pure terror. The takeaway from the Dark Tower books: The unknown is better left unknown, and if the todash’s beasties ever find their way into your reality, run.

Technically, King’s cosmic world-building has nothing to do with The BoogeymanThe new horror film is. HostThe following are some examples of how to get started: Dashcam director Rob Savage — but it was still on my mind for the full 98-minute runtime. Based on King’s short story of the same name, about a troubled father discussing his children’s death with a psychiatrist, and confessing that he believes something supernatural killed them. The Boogeyman is basically a haunted-house movie designed to scare the shit out of people via the human-forward approach that’s defined much of King’s work.

As high-schooler Sadie (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher) investigates the thing going bump at night in her sister’s closet, she’s staving off a mental anguish that she knows many other people have succumbed to. Life: it’s a lot to handle! Savage with Scott Beck, Bryan Woods and other writers (A Quiet PlaceMark HeymanBlack SwanThis psychological drama, which plays like a Hollywood-friendly adaptation of The Prisoner’s Dilemma, gives Thatcher a lot to chew as its central character. It is important to note that the word “you” means “you”. Babadook.

But make no mistake: The Boogeyman is real, and it’s ready to kill Sadie’s family. To quote The Dark Tower’s cowboy guardians, Savage has not forgotten the face of his father. The BoogeymanUnderstanding the dualities of King stories is essential.

David Dastmalchian as Lester Billings, a disturbed father looking mad in The Boogeyman

20th Century Studios

Although The Dark Tower is filled with gun-slinging knights, AI-powered killer trains and dimensional portals, King finds a way to bring them down to earth. While the world is collapsing, King’s characters on earth are also struggling to survive. The personal obstacles of loss or addiction are made to feel just as intimidating as fighting an army of robot raiders with lightsabers. There are indeed lightsabers used in The Dark Tower Series. Roland must learn how to love and be vulnerable in order to complete his journey to the Tower, and to defeat the evil being called the Crimson King. Also, he must kill any creature that tries to escape the space of todash.

Watching The Boogeyman, I felt the Dark Tower’s brand of cosmic horror squeezing tension out of the action on screen — maybe even some that wasn’t there, since The BoogeymanIt is straightforward and dangerously uninteresting. This adaptation begins with the same short story as in the novel: David Dastmalchian.Dune, Prisoners, Suicide Squad) pops up to play the father, Lester Billings, a shattered man who can’t make sense of the monstrous form that has slain his children. Will Harper’s (Chris Messina), his psychiatrist, can hardly hear what he has to say. He and his two daughters (Sadie and Sawyer) are grieving the recent death of their wife in a tragic car accident.Obi Wan Kenobi’s Vivien Lyra Blair) are all mourning.

Stock Emotion is the result of a real-life tragedy that millions of people have experienced. The Boogeyman doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but a second shock compounds the dizzying grief: Shortly after Lester begs Will for help, he’s found strangled to death in the doctor’s home. The police rule that it was a suicide. Will assumes they’re right. Sadie also knows the Boogeyman is the culprit.

Vivien Lyra Blair as Sawyer Harper holding her light ball in The Boogeyman

Photo: Patti Perret/20th Century Studios

The adaption of The BoogeymanIt is a classic horror film with a creepy atmosphere. It is even more creepy than It’s Lights Out or James Wan’s Conjuring movies, Savage’s take on the creature feature is buttoned up and often overextended in the attempt to keep the Harper family’s bereavement at the center of the story. The action gets a bit repetitive: In the wake of Lester’s death, the film oscillates between Boogeyman attacks in the increasingly familiar Harper home, and Sadie’s trips to school, where she’s tormented for being a sad sack who wears her dead mom’s dresses. What are the true monsters in high school? It makes you think. Savage is playful about teasing out the dark corners of the home — whoever invented the cordless light ball deserves residuals on this film, given how often it rolls into the shadows to catch the silhouette of a spindly monster — but eventually, the jump scares wear thin.

Without Thatcher, the middle section would be a drag. In each scene, Thatcher, 22, conjures up a feeling of fear and then transforms it into the kind of energy that an independent film might need. She bursts in to protector mode when the monster shows up, with fire burning behind her eyes. The two are connected by a line.YellowjacketThe following are some examples of how to get started: The Boogeyman, I’m convinced she’s following in the footsteps of Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis as a do-it-all genre star.

Wrapped around this is the big what-if of the movie that I couldn’t shake: What is The Boogeyman What is the Boogeyman’s location? What is the Boogeyman’s purpose? The film isn’t one of the great entries in the Grief Horror subgenre, but it might be exceptional King storytelling for how much it does and does not explain on that front. The film has no cameo appearances by any of the cast members. Salem’s Lot characters to explain that our characters are fighting a being from the todash space, but when you know it’s King, you can’t help but wonder.

Because King so casually and constantly inserts Dark Tower crossover elements into otherwise unrelated work, it’s become easy to fill in lapses of logic with Dark Tower lore and see the characters as a bit deeper than they really are. Savage is able to bend the cosmic horror element in his favor. The Boogeyman, and for fans of King’s world(s), it’s fair to call it the best Dark Tower movie ever made — at least until we get a real one. What did they do now?

The BoogeymanOpening in cinemas June 2

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