Boogeyman 2 DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

In-name-only sequels seem to be a dime a dozen these days. You can walk down the aisles of any retail or rental store and you'll probably see a sequelized movie that you had no idea was made into a sequel. Boogeyman 2 is no different in that aspect, but it is much different than other in-name-only, direct-to-DVD flicks: it's better than the first.

I was not a fan at all of the first Boogeyman flick with Barry Watson. It was shoddy, at best, in nearly every aspect of the film. Poorly acted, written, directed, the whole nine yards. You'd expect a movie that came straight-to-DVD would be in lesser quality than one that received the theatrical treatment, but not so in this case.

The flick starts out much like the first one, with a young brother and sister seeing their parents murdered by the Boogeyman. A few years later, Laura Porter (Danielle Savre) is reunited with her brother Henry (Matt Cohen), who's been in a counseling center for awhile, trying to fight his fear of the Boogeyman. He's getting over his fear and leaving to try to get a job elsewhere and convinces Laura to stay at the clinic as well, to help her with her suppressed fears. Of course, they think she's fairly crazy... until people start dying one mysterious night, and no one knows who's next.

Screenwriter Brian Sieve's script, which is actually his first produced script, is pretty damn solid, with some decent character development and a solid story. The ending kind of irked me at first, but then once I thought about it more, it really was pretty damn inventive.

I was most impressed with Danielle Savre in the lead as Laura. She has a ton of charisma and intensity in this role and she delivers a wallop of a lead performance. While the supporting cast of the other youngsters around her in the clinic are really not that impressive, we get some great supporting turns from veteran actors Renee O'Connor and Tobin Bell as the two senior doctors at the place. Bell brings that same creepy vibe from Jigsaw into this role as Dr. Mitchell Allen who heads up the whole hospital, and O'Connor is quite convincing as the doctor who heads up this phobic group of youngsters.

Jeff Betancourt delivers a very strong performance in the directors chair as well. With a career as an editor previously, he shows quite a bit of talent here in his directorial debut. He even pulled double-duty and edited himself also.

If you hated the first one, I hear ya. Really, I do, but don't let your feelings for that craptastic flick get in your way of seeing this very solid sequel. Most of the times, the fact that the first movie sucked would prevent you from seeing the second. In this case, the exact opposite applies.

The only feature we get here is Bringing Fear to Life: Makeup Effects From Storyboard to Screen, aside from a few commentaries, the Trailer and a few other assorted Previews. It's basically just a slideshow of images and video from the movie, showing the initial storyboards, then showing shots of teh makeup they went through, and then showing parts of those actual scenes. They have some creepy music accompanying it, but really that's it. We don't hear from anyone here at all, no interviews with anyone, just a random collage of images and video. Yeah, you get a decent feel of how they achieved these effects, but still, it could've been a lot better. The whole thing is just a shade under five minutes too, so it's not like they were hurting for time or anything.

The disc is a dual-layered one, with both the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen format and the 1.33:1 fullscreen format on the same disc.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

A pretty nice job here, actually. The front cover is almost a throwback to the 80s horror flick posters, with a shot of Danielle Savre laying on a bed, with the Boogeyman right under it.

The back has a nice shot of Savre running, with the special features listing to the right of that pic. Below that is a solid synopsis, the billing block and tech specs. Not too shabby at all.

A pretty damn good flick, folks. This is a much better-than-average horror flick and its just leaps and bounds better than the first one. If you hated the first, you'll really probably like the second. I'm actually quite mad that the first was in the theaters in this went straight to DVD, because it should've been the other way around.