Here the thing about these ‘Boogeyman’ series of movies other than the stunning fact that this is a series of movies to begin with. The straight to DVD ‘Boogeyman 2’ was actually a better movie than the putrid theatrically released ‘Boogeyman’, while fully recognizing that ‘Boogeyman 2’ really wasn’t all that good. This here movie, ‘Boogeyman 3’, remarkably enough is better than ‘Boogeyman 2’, and again acknowledging that this movie really isn’t all that good either. But my friends what we have here is progress. By the time my boys making these movies gets to ‘Boogeyman 8’ I’m guessing we’ll have an honest to goodness humdinger of a movie on our hands.

Poor Audrey (Nikki Sanderson) is distraught. She’s just come back to close up her dad’s house as he was the psychiatrist played by Tobin Bell in ‘Boogeyman 2’ who was murdered by that lunatic in the previous flick. While putzing around the house Audrey stumbles upon her dad’s diary, reading about his views of the ‘Boogeyman’ that had his patients all spooked, a reading event which apparently made Audrey feel dirty because she now has to jump into the bath to cleanse herself and provide the audience with some completely gratuitous titty and ass shots. I was thinking Audrey was going to represent our ‘final girl’ in this movie but the simple fact that I saw her ass, as any self-respecting watcher of horror knows, she has been eliminated from ‘final girl’ material and has now morphed in into ‘soon to be dead bitch’ territory. To cut to the chase The Boogeyman gets her. More or less.

Back at The U we meet Sarah (Emily Cahill) the movies ‘real’ final girl who is a pre-med psychiatry student who hosts a campus help talk show with her professor Dr. Kane (Matt Rippy). Sarah does this show to help through some tough times she’s dealing with concerning the death of her mother, but otherwise she’s just an average horror movie college student with an eclectic and diverse group of friends. One of

these friends would be the afore mentioned Audrey who has shown up at Sarah’s dorm room claiming The Boogeyman was out to get her. Yes, Sarah may have her own set of psychological problems but she’s not so crazy to believe what this nut is talking about. But as it turns out she should have listened to girlfriend because the next thing you know Sarah sees The Boogeyman choking Audrey to death and making it look like a suicide. Bastard. But on further review if Sarah HAD listened to Audrey there’s not much she could’ve done to help the poor girl against the smoky monster who looks like rocker Steve Perry in desperate need of a Proactiv Solution mask.

Regardless Sarah is now definitely a believer and she tries to make her friends believe as well, but of course they do not, and one by one, including Lukas (W.B. Anderson) the Black Guy, they die horrible deaths. How can Sarah convince these people that the Boogeyman is real and save their lives? Ahhh…. And there’s go the rub with this movie, Boogeyman 3.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this movie in that it is slickly produced and competently directed by Gary Jones, it actually does try to scare you every once in a while unlike a lot of recent horror movies which seem content in just trying to disgust you. They use that freaky monster jump cut effect that was so effective ‘The Ring’ but gets less effective each successive time we see it, but there is still a little life left in it so we might as well beat it until it stops moving. Our crew of one dimensional cannon fodder young actors are functional and do what is required by the fairly unremarkable script, and there is a crap load of fake blood and a couple of decent kills on hand to witness.

This problem with this movie is that it just doesn’t do much to set itself apart in the rather glutted horror genre. The good thing is that it sets its apart from it’s previous namesake set of movies in that it doesn’t suck ass, but it is still fairly run of the mill and paint by numbers as far as horror movies go. It does attempt to do something a little different with their approach to The Boogeyman and how he exists, and I’m feeling where they were going with this thing, but it appears as if the thought process behind this theory wasn’t completely ironed out.

SPOILERS: So you have to believe in the Boogeyman for him to get you… I guess… but do you have to believe in him to see him? I don’t think Sarah believed in the Boogeyman when she saw him choking Audrey, but of course since she’s seen him so sure she believes in him. Or maybe if I believe and you’re close to me then you’ll see what I believe? I mention this because the cops in the end saw Sarah get sucked up an elevator shaft and I’m pretty sure they didn’t believe in the boogeyman, but I betcha they believe now whether they saw him or not because skinny teenaged girls just don’t magically fly up elevator shafts.

The best in the series but still not quite what I would call good, and that's what you have with ‘Boogeyman 3’.