Absintian's Horror Reviews and Thoughts

The Boogeyman 2023 is a new interpretation of the boogeyman legend done a multitude of times in the past. Compared to those older entries this one focuses on the characters and their problems that the boogeyman is the catalyst to healing. The handling of grief when losing a parent at a young age and how the world reacts is written well. Meanwhile, the entity itself is not managed as well as the therapy. Will and his two daughters are stuck managing their own grief of their mother’s death. They are alone as everyone else around them, including the therapists, seem to act on script with little assistance to them. Will is a therapist himself and shows the greatest inability to manage. He can dispense help to his clients, but he himself has turned to the bottle. Going through the motions of being a good father, yet his discussions of the event leading to his wife’s death are few and especially not to his kids. Sawyer, the youngest, is having nightmares of something in her closet and other ...

Haley and her friends gather for a Zoom call during the COVID-19 lockdown. Alcohol is definitely involved but this call is a little special. With the help of a medium they are going to attempt a seance through the Zoom call. They don’t take it seriously from the beginning which brings the attention of a very angry entity.  The plot is standard for ghost stories like this yet the Zoom interface and multiple cameras added a new way for the haunting to be presented. The initial setup of characters and items that will be used later on felt right to get an understanding of who these characters are and their basic personalities for the purpose of the film. The runtime is shorter at just under an hour but the story progresses well without feeling rushed so this runtime felt just right. The characters did not stand out in the way of new character types, just a bunch of friends getting together but they stood out in their reactions once it’s obvious this isn’t a fun night and all felt real in t...