Oh sweet divine jebus…where do I even begin with this one?! The Boogeyman is a short film of the horror variety, well that’s what it’s supposed to be anyway. And yes it’s short (not short enough in my opinion) but is it a horror? Hell no! Ireland has never excelled in the horror genre stakes. For me the closest the Irish film industry has come to a genuine horror was back in 2007 when Paddy Breathnach directed Shrooms, a Treasure Entertainment release. The premise for Shrooms was brilliant – a pack of American sex-craved teenagers go looking for mushies aka magic mushrooms in the woods in Ireland and end up being slaughtered in unimaginative ways. Although the film was devoid of suspense or end of your seat moments or even credible dialogue, it had ambition. What then for Ger Lough’s The Boogeyman, which is based on what is, in my opinion, one of Stephen King’s worst short stories. Basically, for the entire story/film a man sits in a psychiatrists office and tells the nonplussed psychiatrist how his children were all killed off by a creature who lives in the closet called…yup, you’ve guessed it, the Boogeyman! Even when he moves with his wife to a new house and has a new child, his favourite child in fact as he tells the unimpressed shrink, the Boogeyman being the relentless pursuer that he is, follows them and kills off his youngest. Spoiler Alert!! At the end of the story/film, the main character reenters the psychiatrists office to find the psychiatrist taking off a mask to reveal that he is in fact…you’ve guessed it….THE BOOGEYMAN….(faint, horror, gasp, not!!!)
Why someone would decide to make this awful story into a short film is beyond me, especially a low budget short film. The final product is as uninspired and childish as the short story it was based on. The actual design of the ‘Boogeyman’ looks like a shamelessly cheap cross between Darth Vader and one of the aliens from District 9 (2009). Although there are some solid performances, especially from Michael Parl who plays the psychiatrist, and the sound is of impressive quality (in comparison to other low budget shorts), this is 27 minutes of my life I’m never going to get back. And that, unfortunately, is the only scary thing about this film.
