Boogeyman

Tim has carried the same terror since childhood: the memory of his father being taken from his bedroom by a creature he believed lurked in the closet. Now a young man with a job and a girlfriend, he still suffers from the fear that has shadowed him for years. On the advice of his therapist, he returns to the house where he grew up to confront what happened there, and spends a night in his old room with friends nearby. The question that drives the story is whether the Boogeyman was real or a story a boy invented to explain his father's disappearance.

Stephen T. Kay directed the film, his second feature after Get Carter (2000), with a screenplay by Eric Kripke, Juliet Snowden and Stiles White. Sam Raimi, Gary Bryman and Robert Tapert produced for Ghost House Pictures, and the film was made in New Zealand and the United States for a budget of 20 million dollars. Barry Watson plays Tim, with Emily Deschanel as Kate Houghton, Lucy Lawless as Tim's mother, Skye McCole Bartusiak as Franny Roberts, Tory Mussett as Jessica and Louise Wallace as Jessica's mother.

Released in February 2005, the film took about 67 million dollars worldwide, a solid return on its budget. Audience responses were weak: it holds a rating of 4.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 34,000 votes and 4.9 out of 10 on TMDB. A critics' rating of 3.2 out of 10 from 84 reviews places it below even the modest audience scores.