Starring: Barry Watson (I), Emily Deschanel, Lucy Lawless

2 out of 10 stars

Boogeyman is a lot like 99% of the figure skaters you see on television. There are the Michelle Kwans, the Russian boys and girls whose names you can never remember -- the world champions, the one percent who make it all look so effortless and easy. They skate around the ice with precision and grace, listening to the music in their heads as opposed to the sound blaring over the loudspeakers. And just as it seems they're as earthbound as the rest of us, they'll suddenly step into the air as if ascending an invisible ladder, and just hang there, defying gravity, as if a whimsical thought suddenly popped into their head: "Oh, that's right! I can break all laws of physics and, unlike mere mortals, suspend myself high in the air for moments on end – just because I feel like it! So fun!"

Boogeyman is no Michelle Kwan.

Boogeyman is, instead, like all the other skaters whose performances you have to slog through during the Olympics to get to that one, glittering, shining, perfect routine. You know, the workman-like performers, the Tonya Hardings, who get to where they are by sheer grit and determination (if not a little cheating), and you can practically see them sweat on the ice. The gears of their brains almost visible through their skulls, you watch them as they execute each move – one-two-three, one-two-three – and then suddenly start skating backwards with slow determination, looking over their shoulders, getting ready for that big jump. And you know they're about to jump. And they know you know. And still, they keep skating backwards, killing the suspense, while all the time you're thinking "Jump, damn you, jump!" And then, they do. And they fall flat on their asses.

Boogeyman is very much like Tonya Harding.

Why Boogeyman brings to mind professional figure skating is very easy to see once you are about thirty minutes into the movie, and you realize that 20 minutes of that time has been taken up with the slow, slooooooow opening of doors, the cinematic equivalent of waiting for a figure skater to jump; the movie's modus operandi is all extended set-up, with a distinct failure to follow through. Portentous, fraught, and far too drawn out, the quest to look inside every closet becomes a tedious task in this creepy but not very scary thriller. First, you must look at the door. Then the doorknob. Then either the paint job or wood finish. Perhaps the hinges – are they squeaky? Is there a keyhole? What about the light underneath? Is there a light? If not, why isn't there a light?

At about this time in every door-opening scenario (of which there are many, trust me) my mind began to wander: "Is there something behind the door? There must be. But how much longer do I have to wait…. Hmmm, Barry Watson. Will he take his shirt off? Will his skeletal blonde girlfriend get naked? What about Emily Deschanel? She's Zooey's sister, right? She looks kind of like her. I wonder if they get along. I wonder if Zooey's still dating Jason Schwartzman? I wonder if the three of them go to brunch on Sunday somewhere nice in Greenwich Village. Are they vegetarian? Vegans? Does that make ordering an omelet difficult? I wonder if….. oh yes, there is something behind the door. Oh, not that scary. Where was I? Oh yes, omelets…"

Amazingly, in Boogeyman, director Stephen Kay and three screenwriters manage to kill all promise in the can't-miss high-concept of the-thing-in-your-closet-that-scared-you-as-a-kid-is-real. There's no Jeepers Creepers or Nightmare on Elm Street icon here – no, that would require too much imagination! Instead, there's just a lot of suspense, so much that it folds back onto itself out of sheer boredom, and you're left waiting, actually aching, to see the thing that you should be too scared to see at all. The movie slides downhill from the very beginning, as young Timmy lies scared in bed, imagining that all the inanimate objects in his room have come to life. Creepy, fun, visceral, ok so far. Then Timmy's dad comes in, to assuage him that his fears aren't real, and promptly gets sucked into the closet. It's about as scary as reading a sentence describing it. The one saving grace is, you don't get to see the Boogeyman. Perhaps he looks scary, no?

Flash forward 15 years: Timmy is now the broody but not too moody 30 year-old Tim (Watson) with a deep, abiding fear of closets and an apartment with no doors of any kind and a see-through refrigerator (nice touch). Thanksgiving at his girlfriend's parents – they favor closets – results in a sleepless night and bad visions of Timmy's mom (Lucy Lawless, in a throwaway cameo); quelle surprise, a phone call seconds later reveals that she just died. So Timmy drives his vintage Mustang across scenic New Zealand (subbing for generic America) to his childhood home, where there are way too many doors and a creepy little girl (Skye McCole Bartusiak, the movie's one effective performer) who shares Timmy's fear of He Who Lives In The Closet. And wouldn't you know, Mr. Closet Guy is feeling a little confined… and a little lonely these days. Cue the closet door examinations.

All of this moodiness is drawn out to the extreme (not a minor feat for a movie that runs under 90 minutes), and by the time the tone has shifted ever so slightly from creepy to confrontational you are itching for a showdown, if only so that something will happen. Boogeyman seems to aspire to be a more Gothic-American version of The Grudge, but it lacks that movie's confidence, its creepy nihilism (ghosts here are to be overcome, not succumbed to) and in Watson, it also lacks a compelling lead. Granted, Watson has about as much to do here as Sarah Michelle Gellar did in The Grudge – look scared or stricken when appropriate, peer apprehensively down long hallways, ask plot-advancing questions, sport a disheveled yet chic haircut – but as a charismatic center, he does not hold. Deschanel, as his childhood pal, shares her sister's world-weary demeanor, but you can't understand why she wouldn't slough all this off and head for the nearest comparative literature symposium. By the time these two encounter a bright, bright sunshiny day, you'll want to go home and open and shut your closet doors a thousand times, just to prove that it can be done quicker and more effectively than has been demonstrated for the past hour and a half. Most likely, you won't fall on your ass -- literally or figuratively -- while you're doing it.