The Boogeyman

“It’s all just in your head,” explains a reassuring teenager to her younger sister traumatized by a nocturnal nemesis in The Boogeyman. “It’s not real.”

Indeed, both the film and the title character in this adaptation of a 50-year-old Stephen King short story prey upon common fears of the unknown, mining childhood innocence and imagination for creeps and chills.

Yet while the result is moderately unsettling, it mostly indulges in genre tropes rather than subverting them, especially once its monster literally comes out of the bedroom closet. When straying from the source material and fleshing out its creature, the film loses its way.

The story revolves around Will (Chris Messina), a psychiatrist whose anguish over his wife’s recent death has caused him to grow distant from his two precocious daughters, even though he works from a home office.

That’s where he receives a disturbing visit from a stranger (David Dastmalchian) who insists on an immediate appointment. Then he relays a story about being suspected of murdering his three kids, insisting instead that a haunting presence is to blame.

That episode ends tragically, and soon after, young Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) starts experiencing nightmares about a boogeyman in her closet.

Still in mourning herself, Sawyer has trouble convincing the older Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), whose initial skepticism is tested regarding the existence of monsters and the legitimacy of the afterlife. But when Sawyer’s visions, become gradually more vivid and terrifying, the family must believe her.

The Boogeyman marks the most ambitious project yet for British director Rob Savage (Dashcam), whose slick and stylish film makes effective use of familiar narrative and visual tactics, trying to conjure jump scares from creaky doors, ominous shadows, flickering lights, shrieking musical crescendos, and things that go bump in the night.

The tightly wound screenplay co-written by the tandem of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) starts strong enough, gradually building tension through its isolated characters rather than gimmicks or contrivances. Sidestepping excessive supernatural silliness and gratuitous gore, it finds emotional vulnerability in grief.

However, the film stumbles beyond redemption in the muddled final act when trying to apply logic and physical definition to its eponymous apparition. The more we see, the more the mystery is compromised, and the beast is tamed.

Rated PG-13, 98 minutes.