Stephen T. Kay's Boogeyman is based on a great premise. As kids, we were all scared of what might be under the bed or hiding in the closet or looking in on us from an opened window. It's natural to be afraid of the dark at a young age, and the fear of the unknown has long been the source of many an inspired horror story – and why not? The unknown is scary. Or at least, it can be when the unknown doesn't turn out to suck.

The film begins with a young boy named Tim Jensen who witnesses his father (Charles Mesure) being sucked into the closest in his bedroom, never to be seen again. Cut to sixteen years down the road and Tim (Barry Watson) is a successful associate editor at a magazine somewhere in some big city. He's also convinced himself that his dad didn't really get killed by the Boogeyman in the closet, but that he simply ran off on him and his mother instead. It's Thanksgiving Weekend and he's heading off to meet his foxy blonde girlfriend's parents for the first time. Before he leaves, he gets a message from his uncle stating that he should come see his mom (Lucy Lawless of Xena fame) instead, but he disregards it an off he goes. After his girlfriend, Jessica (Tory Mussett), and her snooty family pry into his childhood, Tim heads upstairs to go to bed for the night. Unfortunately for him, he gets a phone call from his Uncle Mike (Philip Gordon) who tells him that his mother has died.

Tim quickly gets in his Mustang and heads on off to the small town where he grew up to attend his mother's funeral. Once it's all over, he decides to face his fears once and for all by spending the night in the old family home where he saw, or at least he thought that he saw, his father get whisked away to the netherworld. Of course, it wouldn't be a trip back to the old stomping grounds without a random encounter with an old flame, and that's just what happens when the cute and cuddly small town girl named Kate (Emily Deschanel) runs into him when he runs out to save her after her horse throws her for a loop.

Things seem to be going okay for Tim at first, but soon enough his baggage from the past comes back to haunt him. When Michelle shows up, she convinces him to get out of the house and run off to get a hotel room with her for the night, just to relax and forget about all the crap he's had to deal with lately. To make matters worse, a creepy little girl is following him around, asking him if the stories about his dad are true. They head out for the night, but once they arrive, Michelle disappears with only a bloody handprint left on the side of the bathtub where she was last seen. Tim somehow ends up back at the old family home once again, and it looks like someone or something is targeting him, and also keeping an eye on Kate…

Maybe it's not the most original premise for a horror film to come down the pipeline in a while, but like I said, it's not a bad starting place. Unfortunately, from this point on, it gets very predictable, very derivative, and inundated with bad CGI effects that would be better suited in something like that remake of The Mummy that came out a few years ago. The film starts off well enough with some creepy atmosphere and a few well timed jump scares that put you on a little closer to the edge of your seat than you might be otherwise, but in the last third of the film it all starts to fall apart. Without spoiling it, let's just say that it turns into a bad cartoon with all sorts of animated effects that just plain don't work. Had the director stuck with the more subtle tone of the first half of the movie, where the psychology of it all is where the creep factor comes from, this might have been a pretty cool little film but by having the actual monster manifest and to have it manifest so poorly really just throws it all out the window.

Crappy ending aside, the film still has some decent performances and good production values. There is some interesting cinematography (there's a great shot of the camera looking out at Tim from his mother's point of view when her coffin is laid into the ground) and the filmmakers make great use of the creaky and shadowy old house where the last half takes place. Barry Watson is fine in the lead role and Emily Deschanel does make for the perfect girl next door type. Lucy Lawless is almost unrecognizable here and anyone expecting her to make that crazy 'woo woo woo' noise and tackle barbarians will be surprised to see her in full make up in a role about as far removed from her turn as Xena as you can get. It's a small part that she plays, but she does provide a couple of creepy moments.

In the end though, Boogeyman is a lot of flash and little substance. It's a decent time killer I suppose, in that it moves along quickly and it looks really good for the most part, but those put off by the trend to hide a lackluster story in horrible effects and rapid fire editing will likely be as burned by the ending of the film as I was. Ultimately, it's a shame that there wasn't more time put into finishing the film on a better note, as the build up is solid and the premise an interesting one.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer on this release looks great. The black levels, which are important for pretty much the entire movie given that so much of it takes place at night and in the darker corners of creaky old homes, remain very strong and very stable. There aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts and edge enhancement is only noticeable in a couple of spots. There are a few scenes that look a little wonky not because of the transfer but because of the film itself, with a few ultra fast edits and strange color distortions wreaking havoc on the small screen. For the most part though, skin tones look natural, colors are reproduced fairly nicely, and there's a pretty decent level of detail present in both the background and the foreground of the picture. This is a rather cold looking film, it was designed that way for better or worse, and the transfer does it justice.