We need a name for a genre of horror that features a supernatural Macguffin that latches itself onto someone and puts them through hell, to the – and this can’t be underlined enough – disbelief of all
those around them.
In these films the outcome for the lead actor (or usually actress) is that they die. Or they “beat” the phantom thing only to be taken out in the coda, because these creatures are supernatural herpes.
You can put ém down, but they’ll always come back…
Anyway – we can cite a number of these movies, which I’ll leave Saul Muerte to fill out…

Gee, thanks Ant, I’m guessing from your description that you’re talking about Supernatural Horrors. In which case, here’s a bunch of descent ones… (SAUL)

• The Orphanage (2007)
• The Innkeepers (2011)
• The Babadook (2014)
• Under The Shadow (2016)
• His House (2020)

… but suffice to say The Boogeyman is the latest iteration.
Based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, it follows the above formula to a tee, and so threatens to be a snooze fest of paint-by-numbers proportions. What it does – being an adaptation from the Master of Horror himself, and therefore makes total sense – is make it character focused. Which on paper straight away causes it to be better for the effort alone. Or it would be if it were not for a few irritating touchstone cliches that the film hits pretty hard (but more on that later).
The lead is Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher who played the young Regan in The Exorcist TV Series) – a teenage girl whose mother was killed in a car accident a year earlier.
Her father is a psychiatrist, Will (Chris Messina), who of course deals with the passing of his wife by NOT talking about it with his children, which equals cliché #1 – a psyche doc who is terrible at being a
psychologist to his own family.
Sadie has a younger sister – Sawyer (Viven Lyra Blair – Birdbox) – who can’t sleep at night without a nightlight (and is a bed wetter to boot) and of course is afraid of monsters lurking in her closet. (Although not enough to CLOSE the door and barricade it with a chair or anything… but kids are notorious non-planners).
So what happens to these Harpers? Well, the dad gets a visit from a clearly disturbed man wanting
to make a walk-in appointment – Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian – Boston Strangler) (has there EVAH been a more Stephen King sounding name than “Lester Billings”? :P). Lester tells Will his three children have died. The first from what would appear to be natural but tragic circumstance (SIDS) but the other two… not so much.
So of course, all eyes are now on him ala Kathleen Folbigg (for non-Aussie readers out there, please
feel free to Google) and poor Lester is at his wits end. Especially once he reveals that what he believes killed child 2 and 3 was… not of this world…
Once that’s done – Lester, now that he has served his story purpose – promptly kills himself (or DID
HE…..? Dun dun….blaaaaah!!!) and we are off to the races.
Because of course what’s really at play here is a demon like creature that is visible only in shadow. It
attacks you and makes you seem crazy as it’ll only present itself to victims it targets. After running
through Lester’s kids like a laxative through a colon, it soon finds the Harpers a delicious temptation because it likes to zero in on a family struck by natural tragedy (remember the mum?) since such
pain leaves them “vulnerable” (or sum such) and it wants to feed off their terror. I honestly may
have zoned out at that point, ‘cause when do they don’t do that?
Anyway, the stage is set, from small scares to bigger ones, as Sadie & Sawyer slowly believe the
creature is real …to finding out more about it….to fighting off the scepticism of all the disbelieving
side characters around them (including their dad. Natch).
And of course, we get The Plan to defeat the creature, followed by the inevitable climax as we see if
this film is one where the plan works, or doesn’t, or does, then doesn’t… (you know how the
variables go).
Sadie is ably played by Sophie Thatcher and Sawyer is excellently played by Vivien Lyra Blair.
Sadie has a best friend who is a pretty poor one as she aligns herself with a clique of nasty bullies
straight out of the mean-girl formula playbook, and Lester’s distraught wife provides the movie with
the monster exposition scenes that tell us (in vague terms) what it is, and what can be done to kill it.
Although just once it’d be nice for these sorts of films to break the format and have the demon
creature do its shit in front of cops and a news crew. That way a concerted effort can be made to
capture/kill it by more than a single exhausted & terrified protagonist.
Mind you, in this day & age, even if the media filmed such a creature half the world would instantly
brand it fake news.
Maybe that’s what a really smart Boogeyman would (& should) do? Attack its victim by first
confusing them, and then gaslighting them. Big time.

The Prognosis.

Starts slow. Starts cliched. Starts too hard. But you do stick around to see how it ends.

• Antony Yee