- Directed by Rob Savage
- Written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Hetman
- Stars Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, David Dastmalchian
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFqCmIU0-_M
Spoiler-free judgment zone
They took an amazing Stephen King short story and stretched it out into a full-length movie. In doing so, they diluted it a lot. It’s well made, well acted, has excellent special effects, and so forth. There is some creepiness, and there are some really good scary moments. But it’s too long and slow-moving in too many parts.
Synopsis
A child sleeps in her crib. The closet door opens. The child cries as the door opens further. A shadowy shape approaches as the child screams and then goes silent. The closet door shuts. Credits roll.
A woman talks to her therapist, Will Harper, about her relationship. He leaves to drive his daughters, Sadie and Sawyer, to school. Their mother, and Will’s wife, has recently died. Naturally, Sadie has to deal with a bully at school.
Will goes home, and a strange man comes to the door wanting to talk. He’s Lester Billings, and he asks Will to shut the closet door before he’ll talk. He says some people think he killed his kids, but he swears he didn’t. He says his youngest died of SIDS, but then the older two died within a year. He says there’s no way there was anything natural about it. “I only glimpsed it once before my baby’s neck broke.” He pulls out a disturbing drawing of “something that comes for your kids when you’re not paying attention.”
Will slips out and calls the police, but Lester walks through the house and watches Sadie, who is home from school. She follows a strange sound into her mother’s studio, where she hears something in the closet. Will comes in, and they find Lester has hanged himself. Sadie listens as Will tells the police about Lester’s “Shadow Monster.”
That night, at bedtime, Sawyer wants Will to check under the bed and inside the closet for monsters. Sadie and Will talk about the dead mother and how that all felt. Sadie then stays up late watching YouTube videos about how to contact the dead. That night, Sawyer’s closet door opens by itself rather violently. She goes to sleep in Sadie’s room.
Both Sadie and Sawyer talk about seeing a dark thing to their own therapist. The therapist darkens the room with a gradually dimming light to show them there’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark. Sawyer sees a creature crawling on the ceiling and screams. When they turn the light on, there’s nothing there. Will apologizes for ever letting “That Man” inside their house.
That night, Sawyer explores the dark house while Sadie listens to the recording of Billings’s statement. They both end up seeing the picture that Billings’s child drew– and they both recognize it.
The next day, Sadie gets a ride with Bethany to Billings’ house. It looks abandoned, but she finds a setup that shines bright light into a creepy closet. There are about a million candles upstairs, and all the walls and ceiling look overgrown with viney things. She eventually runs into Mrs. Billings and asks her about the monster drawing. “It must have latched onto you now. They called it the Boogeyman. I think it’s been around forever.” Or maybe the woman is just crazy.
Sadie has a jump-scary dream and then argues with her father. Sadie talks to Bethany, who seems to actually want to help. Bethany invites Sadie to go hang out with them later, and they all get bored really, really fast. They all smoke some of Mom’s leftover weed. Except she ends up vomiting out… one of Sawyer’s teeth.
The girls want to see Sadie’s mother’s room, and she gets locked in the dark room. Apparently, the monster is waiting for her there as well. The party does not go well after that. Meanwhile, Sawyer is being terrorized in her room by the same monster and ends up in the hospital.
Rita Billings calls Sadie and says she knows how to stop the monster, but she needs her help. Will thinks all of Sawyer’s problems are mental manifestations of her anguish, but Sadie tells him it’s all real. She was high when she saw the thing, so he doesn’t believe her.
Sadie goes to the Billings’ house and sees Rita, who has lethal booby-trapped the whole house. Rita’s invited Sadie here as bait and ties her up. Slowly, all the candles blow out, and she can hear it wheezing as it approaches. It sets off the trip wires and the weapons go off, which disables the thing. Rita then blasts it a few times with a shotgun, but it jumps right back up and kills her. Sadie barely gets outside.
Will calls Sadie on his phone; they’ve just gone home from the hospital. Sadie warns him not to go inside, but he does, and the thing gets him. Sadie gets home, but she doesn’t turn on any lights for some crazy reason. She finds Sawyer hiding in a closet with Christmas Tree lights.
Sawyer and Sadie then go into the basement and spill some of her mother’s old paint solvent on the floor. The big spider-like creature has Will down there, and it runs around trying to catch Sadie.
It catches and starts sucking the life out of Sadie, but Will wakes up and stabs it. The lights all go out, and there’s much crawling around in the dark. Will’s broken his leg so he can’t get up to run away. Sadie uses her mother’s lighter and a can of spray paint to flamethrower the creature. Then they set it on fire and watch it burn. Even the vines along the walls and ceiling burn.
The whole family is going to need lots of therapy after this.
Commentary
The film starts off with the warning, “Contains Tobacco Depictions.” Oh my. Now I know it’s gonna be scary! It’s a movie about death, suicide, mental health, murder, and a monster that eats children– but tobacco is what they warn us about?
The creature is very effective, even though we don’t see much of it until the end.
It’s got monsters under the bed and in the closet, so that’s always a good start. It’s really good on the creepy factor, and there are more than a few good jump scares. On the other hand, it’s stretched out way longer than it needs to be and is much too slow-paced.
Bottom line: it’s too long and slow, but otherwise quite good.