Boogeyman
Release Date:
February 4, 2005
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 97/166 |
David Mumpower |
The scariest film of 2005 to date. Not that this is saying much. |
A young man decides to return home following the tragic death of his father. A traumatic and emotional time in and of itself, but the young man must face more than grief over his father’s loss upon returning to his childhood home. As a lad, he was terrorized nightly in his bedroom by a monstrous presence, and the memories of that trauma have left him emotionally scarred. Facing those fears and revealing them to be a figment of his imagination, which is what he has been told most of his life, would possibly heal his shattered psyche. But the young man can’t quite shake the conviction formed in his youth that the boogeyman in his bedroom is real, confirmation of which is a much more frightening and dangerous prospect.
The Boogeyman is the debut project from Ghost House Pictures, which is Sam Raimi’s new production company. Ghost House will specialize in Raimi’s favorite genre, horror, and certainly the premise of its initial offering sound very promising (the title, on the other hand, may be less so; there are reports that it will change before release). There are also some plotline parallels to the 2003 release Darkness Falls, which did a decent bit of business during its theatrical run. The key to making a success of a monster-under-the-bed flick is to walk the fine line between giving too much too soon and playing your cards so close to the vest that the audience gets bored long before the big reveal. It’s a bit of a tricky sub-genre, really, because even though the audience knows there really is a boogeyman in the flick, the story has to believably play out as though the person or persons who see it might be imagining things. That’s essential. A really cool thing-that-goes-bump-in-the-night helps a lot, too. Given the director and writers have little experience in horror films (or films in general, for that matter), one hopes that Sam Raimi takes a bit of a hands-on approach to producing in this instance. The Boogeyman has a lot of potential; how much of that potential is realized on-screen is a tantalizing question for which the answer is anticipated with a good deal of interest. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
Comparison films for Boogeyman |
Title |
Date |
Opening |
Adjusted Opening |
Screens |
PSA |
Adj PSA |
Total BO |
Adjusted Total |
Mult |
| Sixth Sense, The |
8/6/99 | 26.68 |
31.79 |
2161 |
12346.00 |
14095.8 |
293.50 |
349.76 |
11.00 |
| Ring, The |
10/18/02 | 15.02 |
15.61 |
1981 |
7580.00 |
7580.0 |
128.90 |
134.01 |
8.58 |
| Others, The |
8/10/01 | 14.09 |
15.03 |
1678 |
8397.00 |
8619.9 |
96.08 |
102.54 |
6.82 |
| Darkness Falls |
1/24/03 | 12.02 |
12.02 |
2837 |
4239.00 |
4239.0 |
32.54 |
32.54 |
2.71 |
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