This Stephen King horror story serves up a tasty treat of jumps and bumps... trends now
The Boogeyman (15, 98 mins)
Verdict: Murder in the dark
Reality (12, 83 mins)
Verdict: Tense whistleblower tale
Like many a night-time horror, The Boogeyman exists in a parallel universe where big lights either don't work or aren't used.
People go about their daily business relying on tired old bedside lamps, open fridges or candles — a habit I'd quickly abandon if I thought I shared my home with a child-murdering beast who thrives in darkness.
The film is adapted from a short story by senior ghost-botherer Stephen King. His well-worn route to Hollywood brought us Carrie, The Shining and Misery.
We haven't got Kathy Bates or Jack Nicholson here, but a C-list troupe of actors do a solid job of stringing together the jumps and bangs.
We're at home with the Harpers: teenager Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), her younger sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair, a child actor's name if ever I saw one) and their therapist dad Will (Chris Messina with greying, distressed-father-of-two beard).
The film is adapted from a short story by senior ghost-botherer Stephen King. Pictured: Sophie Thatcher as Sadie in The Boogeyman
The family are already mourning the loss of their mother when a supernatural twist stumbles their way.
A sweaty and beady-eyed man arrives at Will's consulting room unannounced, with a goosebump-pumping tale about how his two children were killed by a shadowy monster.
In 20 minutes we are taken through the deaths of four people, with your man eventually hanging by the neck, chez Harper, as the fifth.
Cue the Boogeyman.
Once set loose in their home, the horror relies almost entirely on periods of silence followed by loud noises, or faces briefly glimpsed in shadows (turn that big light on!). It does the business. I screamed plenty. But then again, slam a door and I'll squeak.
One neat evolution of the trembling, hand-held candle down a dark corridor trope is a wireless moon nightlight, rolled down a dark corridor. You can guess what it reveals at the end.
Although the emotional subtext of familial grief never really takes hold in you, when a plot is hatched to dispatch the Boogeybloke once and for all, I found myself punching the air in support and wriggling in anticipation. Note to self — a shotgun blast alone won't do it.
It's all packed into 98 minutes, so there isn't time to drift away. A queue of set pieces come quickly enough, although once you get a proper look at the thing it does kill the terror somewhat. The quick glimpses are always more chilling than full-frontal CGI.
Arguably just as spooky is verbatim FBI procedural Reality. It's slow stuff, but psychologically sinister.
Director Tina Satter has taken a 90-minute slice of transcript from an audio recording of the 2017 arrest of a U.S. national security agency translator, Reality Winner, and dramatised it. So far, so boring.
We begin with Reality arriving home in her car to find two FBI heavies at her door. A Dictaphone is clicked on, we hear the people's actual voices, we see the waveform wobbling and the transcript clicking away on a word processor.
This retelling then takes off, sticking rigidly to every um, ah and stumble. And it's fabulous.
The confusion and slow unravelling grips immediately. Why has Reality been arrested? What are they looking for? Does she know what is going on? Has she done something awful? Will she?
Arguably just as spooky is verbatim FBI procedural Reality. It's slow stuff, but psychologically sinister. Pictured: Sydney Sweeney
Reality's cold stare (from a mighty Sydney Sweeney) betrays little, as the bumbling FBI agents waffle between asking mundane
