Film Analysis: The Boogey Man

The film The Boogey Man, is a Horror film, directed by Stephen Kay, that is a take on the classic ‘Boogie Man’ or monster in the closet who is the main antagonist of the film. It is the second film of an apparent trilogy. One particularly important scene is the scene at the beginning with the main character, Tim Jensen, at a young age going through a series of mysterious occurrences in his room at night to then witness his dad being taken by the Boogie man. Stephen uses the five aspects Lighting, Dialogue, Character’s actions, Camerawork and Soundtrack to emphasize the overall dark mood that is tempted to make.

SoundTrack
A key aspect that was used in this scene was the way that the director builds and releases tension when required using the sound track. This is used as Tim gets up to put his clothes in his draws. The slow, high pitch music in the background started to become more high pitch and louder as the light falls and breaks, the door then opens revealing a shadowing figure as the music comes to its climax. This non-Diegetic music serves the purpose of amplifying the emotion and tension of the atmosphere in this scene in the way that diegetic sounds are restricted from. The use of the monotonous, string based, music served as a way of emitting a

sort of uneased feeling and as the pitch grows it signifies the presence of something getting closer and closer ending when the complication hits the characters or in this case to release the tension to see that it is only Tim’s Father. This scene opens with lighting going off frequently at a loud volume. This is another common horror convection playing the purpose of giving off an immediate emphasis for the dark and mysterious scene.
The scene opens to an establishing shot showing an old, two story house in the middle of no where with high volumed lightning strikes, zooming in down on the moving swing giving off a creaking sound. Then the camera makes its way through the house, with multiple diegetic sounds like the groaning stairs and creaking door, more common horror conventions. They show the houses isolation in the establishing shot to represent the absence of escape. Shortly after the establishing shot and the multiple diegetic sounds from the house helped amplify the darkened mood. The director integrated the use of the camera work and noises within the soundtrack in order to create a significant atmosphere to help build tension for the paranormal killer that will be revealed in this first scene.

Key Lighting
In order for the purpose of this scene to be effective the director used Key lighting throughout it to create moods when he feels it is required. There was low key lighting throughout Tim’s room as the only luminous source available was the moon and lightning beaming through his windows highlighting shadowy objects and figures giving off illusions like when the dark silhouette is seen on the table. The low key lighting set the dark and mysterious mood and made the silhouette effective creating suspense with the lack of perception of what it could be. Preventing the audience the knowledge of what it may be is often used to keep the audience on the edge of their seats because not knowing what a supernatural being is means the audience has no knowledge of what it is capable of.
As the door to Tim's room opens behind him and a low angle shot looking behind him at the dark silhouette showed how it towered above him and how Tim cannot do any attempt at escaping apart from retreating back to his bed. As Tim is covered by his sheets it uses a point of view shot from what he sees. His line of sight is shaded by his sheet and shows the dark silhouette getting closer and closer with multiple lightning strike rapidly going off as it gets close, but as the sheets are removed by the dark figure it is confirmed to be his father. Showing the audience the point of view of Tim helps emphasise the vulnerability he is in and how he has no way of defending himself from this superior figure and the rapid lightning strikes unsettles the audience creating tension as the figure approaches. The way that the director was able to incorporate both the lighting and camera work to build and release tension and produce a mood that can create the desirable atmosphere for a horror film.
Dialogue
The Director also used Dialogue in the BoogeyMan as key aspect in this scene.

The Father looks through Tim’s room to help comfort him and as he finishes checking his closet he says ‘Just us’. This then sparks the BoogeyMan to ,then, Viciously kill him leaving his son by himself. With the father saying this shows how he is unintimidated by the Boogeyman and trying to show Tim there is nothing to fear. The director chooses this type of language as it can be seen as a way of provoking the Boogeyman causing the death. By using this dialogue, the Director was able to leave the audience thinking that the supernatural occurrences had come to an end and be at ease just to mislead them and end up having him be

killed.
In a way, the Father is comparable to a person in society as he stands up to a higher class to for his concern for others and his own well being just to be shut down. He represents the constant battle for under middle class citizens that are losing the fight against the boogeyman who represents the more privileged groups gaining from the suffering of lower class people.