Many years ago, a drunken lush of a woman is partying hard with her boyfriend at
home on a chilly night. Her two kids, Lacey and her older brother Willy, have
been put out of the house so that the adults can have their wild and crazy fun
(which consists of the woman putting her panty hose over the guy’s head). When
their mother sees her little darlings staring in at them through the window, she throws a fit,
causing the boyfriend to take manners into his own hands by tying Willy down to
the bed in his room, which is a form of corporeal punishment that would probably
really tick off Dr. Phil. Lacey promptly gets a knife from the kitchen and cuts
her brother loose--only to have Willy take the knife from her, walk into his
mother’s bedroom, and stab the boyfriend to death.
Lacey watched the murder in the mirror on the bedroom wall, and even as an adult
years later (now played by Suzanna Love), she’s still haunted by the killing, constantly waking up screaming
from scary dreams--which must be loads of fun for her husband Jake. Willy, who lives
with his sister, hasn’t said a word since the murders, and constantly gives the
off-kilter vibe of a ticking time bomb. Dr. Warren, Lacey’s psychiatrist (the
late, great John Carradine), suggests that she go back to the house where she
lived with her mother and brother and confront her memories. When she does,
Lacey sees the reflection of her mother’s boyfriend in the very same bedroom mirror (the new
tenants never thought about redecorating after all these years?), and freaks out,
breaking the mirror into a million pieces. Jake brings the shattered shards of
the mirror home and promptly puts them back together and hangs it up on the wall
of the kitchen. Why? Who the hell knows.
But what neither Lacey or Jake realize is that the spirit of her mother’s
boyfriend (who never had a real name, apparently) has been unleashed once the
mirror was shattered. And now he’s free to randomly kill people for no reason at
all. Directed by Ulli Lommel, who never met a horror cliché he didn’t like, The
Boogeyman is a loopy film that starts out very strong--the first half hour is
pretty intense--and then just flounders as it goes on. Part of the problem is
the concept. The killer’s ghost is attached to the mirror,
even after it’s broken. And so wherever there’s a shard lying around, look out!
Nice idea, but the execution is pretty lame. A case in point is the fact that
since it was Willy who was
the one who originally killed The Boogeyman, wouldn't you think he'd be the
number one target of the ghost's supernatural wrath? And yet the Boogeyman goes
after everybody else and their brother--total strangers who had nothing to do
with the situation except that they either come across a mirror shard, or just
happen to be standing in the reflection of the mirror.
And there's the scene where
Lacey takes her young son fishing, and a shard of the mirror gets stuck on the
sole of the kid’s sneaker. It happens to shine on some horny teenagers (who
else?) across the water, who get killed in a scene that’s so laughably silly it’s
almost embarrassing to watch.
By the time a priest is called in to do his Exorcist bit, The Boogeyman has devolved into a flat-out
comedy. Amazingly, several sequels were made from this turkey, with each one
even worse than the original--which is saying a lot. This DVD comes with one
of the sequels, Return Of The Boogeyman, which makes the first film look like
Citizen Kane. Do what you used to do as a
kid and avoid the Boogeyman at all cost. --SF
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