Boogeyman (2005) – What Happened to This Horror Movie?

The What Happened to This Horror Movie episode on Boogeyman was written by Jaime Vasquez:

Reaching its twentieth anniversary this year is 2005’s Boogeyman, not to be confused with the slow-burn atmospheric Stephen King adaptation from 2023, or the 1980 Halloween knockoff that shamelessly used “you can’t kill the boogeyman” in its trailer. This Boogeyman was the PG-13 horror movie seemingly designed to terrify middle schoolers into never sleeping again. Back in 2005, you can bet plenty of kids went home from the theater and immediately cleared their closets, checked under their beds, and banished any oddly-shaped coat racks that could resemble a person in the dark. Sam Raimi, fresh off his success remaking Japanese horror for American audiences, decided to produce this supernatural spookfest. Only this time, there’s a monster that lives in the shadows, preys on childhood fears, and may or may not have a thing for hanging creepy decor from bedroom ceilings. But two decades later… does Boogeyman still crawl under your skin? Did its moody, J-horror-inspired style win over critics and audiences; or did it earn a firm thumbs down and possibly another finger? Which tired trope drags it down, and which modern horror does it share some interesting story beats with? Let’s open the creaky closet door and see what happened to 2005’s Boogeyman.

After the success of Japanese horror remakes like The Ring, Ghost House Pictures founders Raimi and his longtime business partner Robert Tapert were ready to keep milking the cash cow. Because when you’ve got a spooky, long-haired ghost girl printing money, why stop there? Fresh off their production company’s first release and box office hit The Grudge, they pushed to keep the momentum going and deliver another Japanese-inspired horror flick. All the while keeping a PG-13 rating to bring in the maximum potential box office. Eric Kripke, who would later go on to create the long-running mega-hit Supernatural, wrote the original story for Boogeyman, which he cites as his first-ever produced script. The screenplay was eventually updated by husband-and-wife writing duo Juliet Snowden and Stiles White. Their supernatural sensibilities stayed intact, later carrying over into projects like The Possession, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick, and the original Ouija movie, which also marked White’s directorial debut. While Boogeyman was one of their earlier collaborations, Stiles White’s impact on the genre goes back even further. He started out in the mid-‘90s as a special effects artist on hits like Interview with the Vampire and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Director Stephen Kay got his start as an actor, working under the name Stephen T. Kay. He continued landing small roles until he took on a more prominent role as a director, eventually helming the 2000 remake Get Carter, starring Sly Stallone. After a string of film credits, he found more of a foothold in television, directing episodes of Friday Night Lights, Sons of Anarchy, and Yellowstone among several others. Oh, and he’s married to Coyote Ugly star Piper Perabo. So, there’s that.

Tapert described the Boogeyman as a physical manifestation of fear. For our lead character Tim, that fear takes root as his father disappears when he’s just eight years old, an event he sees as the Boogeyman taking his dad despite rationalizing it away as an adult. Tapert noted that the film should appeal to fans of The Evil Dead thanks to its supernatural elements, but also claimed Boogeyman stands on its own, taking enough turns to differentiate itself from the Raimi classic… like, say, featuring a black crow dangling in a child’s bedroom. Because nothing says “safe space for a child” like a decorative omen of death hanging over your bed.

Raimi spoke to Variety about the universal status of the film’s antagonist saying, “The boogeyman is a mythical character that is the stuff of stories of generations,” and added, “He is a horrible creature that consumes human beings whole and exists in a thousand different forms in children’s imaginations, living in the shadows of the clothes hung in the closet or in the darkest regions underneath the bed.” For some of us, the boogeyman might be Michael Myers or John Wick, but it’s hard to disagree with Raimi’s take on the urban legend.

While there was some uncertainty over the story’s direction, the final film landed somewhere between psychological thriller and supernatural horror. The titular Boogeyman exists in Tim’s mind, but also very much in the real world, coming after him in the flesh. Tapert praised the director’s approach, saying Kay chose to make a movie about people first, and then layer in the horror, rather than going for a straight-up haunted house ride. Tapert believed the story being grounded in everyday life would make the scares hit harder.

Barry Watson, fresh off the long-running CW hit Seventh Heaven, the show that equates smoking pot with murdering puppies, was cast in the lead role of Tim Jensen. The production team had been struggling to find their leading man, but at the last minute, after watching a New Zealand filmed movie with Watson in the lead role, (presumably the 2001 thriller When Strangers Appear), both Raimi and his wife agreed he’d be perfect for the part. Kay pointed out that the role needed someone likeable and relatable, someone who could take the audience on an emotionally messy journey without them hating him for it. Well… at least that was the intention.

Emily Deschanel said she was drawn to her character because of her bold, straightforward personality. She plays the role of Kate, Tim’s childhood friend who strangely has no idea of the dark CGI presence haunting him. Deschanel brings some much-needed levity to the film, balancing out the dreary vibe with her natural charisma. Nothing about her performance feels forced or even out of place. She’s just a natural-born performer.

The film also stars Tapert’s wife (and Xena: Warrior Princess herself) Lucy Lawless as Tim’s antagonistic mother. Tory Mussett plays Tim’s understandably confused girlfriend Jessica. And the late actress Skye McCole Bartusiak plays Franny, a child dealing with her own trauma, as she can see the same nightmarish entity that Tim does.

Kay had a very specific vision for the look of the film, meaning he wanted to make sure you’d barely see anything. In post-production, he had mountains of footage ready for color correction… and then lowered the contrast so much you’d be constantly guessing what was lurking in the shadows. Was it the boogeyman? Was it a coat rack? Was it the boogeyman standing behind a coat rack? The end result was a movie so reliant on darkness that audiences couldn’t help but compare it to Darkness Falls, and maybe not always as a compliment.

The film’s creepiest moments were planned in detail mostly using storyboards, from the opening scene where young Tim watches his father attacked and whisked away into the dark, to the finale where the Boogeyman finally steps into the light. That reveal was shot on a green screen with a wired-up dummy, later transformed digitally into a handful of nightmarish designs; one was a twisted version of Tim’s creepy childhood action figure, while the other was a man’s body with a rapidly morphing sequence of faces that looked genuinely unsettling.

The director said it was the most limited time he’d ever had to shoot a movie, which was probably made trickier by the fact that most of the cast was American and had to fly all the way to New Zealand to shoot the film. Presumably, that’s at least a couple of days lost right there, just in travel, jet lag, and figuring out which side of the road to drive on.

In on-set interviews, the cast and crew cited Japanese horror as the film’s main stylistic influence. Kay even mentioned changing the original script’s pace to mimic the trendy slow-burn pace of the subgenre. When mentioning Japanese horror, everyone has a twinkle in their eyes. Which only makes me wonder, given the way we look at American J-horror now, if 20 years from now, we’ll all look at A24 Horror as crap.

Released in early February, Boogeyman actually fared surprisingly well for a film dumped into a notorious “death slot” month. Opening weekend alone nearly earned back its $20 million budget, pulling in $19 million and landing the number one spot at the box office. By the end of its theatrical run, it had earned $46 million domestically and another $20 million overseas, bringing its worldwide total to $67 million. Not bad at all for a modestly budgeted horror flick from a brand-new production company. But the good news stopped at the box office. Critics and audiences were united in their disapproval, hacking the film to pieces upon release. Its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at a bleak 11% from critics and a slightly less fatal 21% from audiences, with most reviews citing the same triple offense: no story, no scares, and no originality.

But as always, money talks, and Boogeyman’s commercial success inevitably summoned two sequels. Boogeyman 2 in 2007 and Boogeyman 3 in 2008. Both skipped theaters and went straight to DVD. The second film scraped together enough sales to justify another installment, but the third barely registered on the radar. And with that, the franchise was laid to rest.

Boogeyman feels like a lighter, less intense precursor to Sinister, thanks to a similar premise. But while Sinister‘s jump scares were more effective, in Boogeyman, they hit more like someone popping a plastic bag right next to your ear rather than genuine terror.

It’s understandable that they dialed down certain elements in order to secure a PG-13 rating. But Boogeyman still squanders a lot of potential. The story feels half-told, as if essential pieces were either left on the cutting room floor, or maybe never written to begin with. And that’s a shame, because beneath the stretches of dullness and some robotic dialogue, there’s the shadow of something more promising and possibly even compelling. But just like its titular character, it mostly stays hidden in the dark. And that, my friends, is what happened to Boogeyman.

A couple of the previous episodes of this show can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

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