The Boogeyman (2023)

The Boogeyman works because it understands that the scariest monsters don’t just lurk in closets—they move in when a family is too broken to notice the door is open. Rob Savage delivers a lean, nerve-jangling ride with a thick, shadowy atmosphere and a smart visual sense of where to place darkness so your imagination does the screaming, while Sophie Thatcher anchors it all with a performance that feels raw and lived-in rather than “horror-movie brave.” The scares come with real suspense and a mean streak of unpredictability, but they’re tied to grief in a way that gives the terror emotional weight instead of empty jolts. If you want a gentle, bloodless ghost story this isn’t it, but if you’re on the fence and craving a polished, crowd-pleasing horror film that actually earns its chills, this one is worth turning the lights down for.

The Boogeyman wants to be a grief-soaked, jump-scare creature feature where a family’s trauma literally crawls out of the dark, and you can feel it reaching for that Stephen King-style dread. The problem is it plays like a greatest-hits compilation of modern studio horror—familiar beats, telegraphed scares, and a pace that often drifts just when it needs to tighten the screws. The characters and emotional fallout are sketched rather than deeply felt, so the “fear feeds on grief” hook doesn’t land as hard as it should. If you’re happy with a polished, PG-13 crowd-pleaser with a couple of solid set pieces and strong performances from the kids, it’s serviceable; if you want originality or a movie that lingers in your head afterward, this probably won’t be it.