The Boogeyman  ★★½

SOMETIMES you’re allowed to expect a little bit more.

Rob Savage made a good budge horror fil called The Host released in 2020.

His next film, Dashcam from 2021, wasn’t for me but others lauded it.

For The Boogeyman (2023) he was given a much bigger budget and a Stephen King short story to base it on with the writers of A Quiet Place I and II adapting.

So why is the result still a fairly pedestrian affair?

Because even though the base material was written by King 50 years ago, we have seen thousands of films give us similar stories in the interim.

Savage’s film is well made, with good performances and some very tense scenes, particularly a couple involving use of a child’s glowing ball.

But in terms of story, I expected more than a standard dark entity in dark house tale.

Perhaps, after nearly 80 screen adaptations of King’s formidable works, the library is starting to thin.