The Direct-to-Video sequel. Damn you gotta love ‘em. When I received my copy of ‘Boogeyman 2’ in the mail I was confused because I don’t even remember there being a ‘Boogeyman’. But a friend reminded me that I had seen it and went into detail describing that flick. Damn, that was just a lousy two years ago and I forgot it already? Is old age creeping up on me faster than I wish to admit? Hell no. The ‘Boogeyman’ was simply one of the worst movies I’d ever seen, whatever genre, and the fact that they would even think of making a sequel would never have never crossed my simple mind. A sequel of that? No freaking way. But alas if Direct-to-Video is good for nothing else, which I don’t believe because I LOVE DTV, it’s good for making sequels of worthless theatrical movies. ‘Doctor Doolittle 3’ anybody? ‘Daddy Day Camp’ anybody? Huh? They released ‘Daddy Day Camp’ to theaters? No they didn’t, stop playing. Only an idiot with a stub for a brain would bypass DTV and think that the horrific entity known as ‘Daddy Day Camp’ would even have a chance at a multi-plex. Embrace DTV sucka.

Ten years ago some crazed killer slaughtered young Henry and young Laura’s parents, spilling dad’s entrails all over the hallway floor and impaling mom to the wall with a knife stuck through her neck. Nice. Now Laura (Danielle Savre) and Henry (Matt Cohen) are totally screwed up young adults who are afraid of the dark, and the Boogeyman in particular, considering that the authorities never caught their parent’s eviscerators. Henry though is a bit fed up with being crazy and checks himself into a local insane asylum, errr… voluntarily psychiatric hospital, run by wacky docs Mitchell Allen (Tobin Bell) and Jessica Ryan (Renee O’Connor). Now all cured up, Henry is finally ready to live a normal life and move to San Francisco, but this gets Laura’s panties in a bunch because that would mean she would be alone to deal with her boogeyman nightmares, and that would suck. Henry suggest that Laura checks into the loony bin that has cured him because he’s also grown tired of Laura waking up screaming every night.

So into the nuthouse she goes where she meets other young compulsive fear infested psychos such as Darren (Michael Graziadei) the agoraphobe, Mark (David Gallagher) a fellow dark fearer, Nicky (Christine Griffith) the bitchy one who fears being fat, Paul (Johnny Simmons) the germophobe, and Alison (Mae Whitman) the cutter. Even though entry to this little club of loons is voluntary, they still lock the place from the inside at night because it’s a plot point that simply just has to be. Trouble starts almost immediately when darkophobe Mark finds a rather grisly untimely death at the hands of a mysterious hooded figure who has used his intense fear against him. Even though she didn’t see what happened Laura is convinced the boogeyman has returned, and now even the crazy people thinks she crazy. Well perhaps they should have listened because the next day this hooded figure starts picking off our randy young adults quite brutally, using their fears against them, even though they still find time for some gratuitous sex amidst the slaughter, until eventually it’s just the final girl and her worst fear face to face.

Is ‘Boogeyman 2’ better than ‘Boogeyman’? Sure it is. But then a dramatic reading of the U.S. Atlas is better than ‘Boogeyman’. Though ‘Boogeyman 2’ is your standard run-hide-and slash fare it still manages to be fairly disappointing stuff when taken as a whole. The Boogeyman himself is probably the biggest disappointment because the hope would be that he is some type of otherworldly character that emerges from our nightmares, obviously Freddie Krueger comes to mind, but in actuality the Boogeyman, and this is a bit of a SPOILER, is just some dude. I suppose that there is supposed to be a mystery who this dude is, but chances are you’ll figure who our mystery killer is about twenty minutes in. Pretty much knowing who our killer is will cause one to wonder how in the world he (or she) got the skill to hook up all of that mouse trap style incredible machinery he used to kill the crazy kids. Another scene that was kind of silly was when he slaughtered one of our characters (where did he find all of those maggots by the way) allowed her to be found by our final girl who runs to get some of her fellow lunatics to show them that the person is dead only to find the person gone and that individuals room spic and span. How the killer cleaned up THAT horrific mess in 45 seconds is one thing, but why is another. Did he want the people to think that Laura is crazy? Uh, she’s in an insane asylum already my friend so that’s fairly pointless, plus you’re going to kill these other loons in a few minutes anyway so who cares what they think.

Again what he have is here another horror movie that is based on disgusting you than actually using the talents of writing, lighting and atmosphere to scare you. ‘Boogeyman 2’ is a competent movie, but just not a very entertaining or effective one.