village voice > film > Tracking Shots: Film by Joshua Land

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Film

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Tracking Shots

Film

by Joshua Land

February 1st, 2005 12:00 AM

Boogeyman
Directed by Stephen Kay
Screen Gems, in release

Kabluey
Tracking Shots by Jim Ridley

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
by McCann, Ruth

Diminished Capacity
Tracking Shots by Nick Pinkerton

Holding Trevor
Tracking Shots by Julia Wallace

We Are Together
Tracking Shots by Ella Taylor

Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein
by Tony Ortega

Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing?
Savage Love by Dan Savage

At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X
by Andy Kropa

Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires
La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto

Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem
by Graham Rayman

The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17)
Nat Hentoff

Scientology's Crushing Defeat (15)
Tony Ortega

Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9)
Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs

Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6)
Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard

Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5)
Savage Love: Dan Savage

"This is gonna get ugly," one character says near the beginning of Boogeyman, and he's not just talking about running out of booze at his office party. Arriving a few days too late to technically be considered a January dump job, the movie opens with young Tim witnessing his father's apparent murder by the infamous B-man. When his estranged mother dies 15 years later, Tim (Barry Watson) must return to the decrepit haunted mansion he grew up in, navigating a perilous series of horror clichés—a creepy bird, a creepy kid, a Bates Motel stand-in—to face his nemesis. Director Stephen Kay, a devotee of the unmotivated low-angle and pointless extreme close-up, delivers a film that barely betrays evidence of having been made from a script—several scenes end with characters abruptly declaring, "I have to go"; others rely for "suspense" on brooding shots of Tim staring blankly into dark closets. By the final third, narrative logic has taken a permanent vacation—indeed, it's difficult to remember a recent movie with less regard for spatial or temporal coherence. With the bar set so low, one wouldn't think the ending could possibly come as a letdown. Believe me, it does.

More Tracking Shots

The Bank Job
Finally, a real Jason Statham movie

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Costumes pass for plot in WWII update

Fighting for Life
War doctor doc, staggeringly effective

Blindsight
Adventure doc looks at blindness in Tibet

Myra Breckinridge
The Queer Precursor to Southland Tales