THE BOOGEYMAN

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens in a little girl’s bedroom. She is frightened by a noise and an evil presence that emerges from her closet. It moves closer toward her and says it is her father. Just as she starts to scream, we hear a crunch and see a shot of blood splatter a nearby photograph.

In a nearby home, Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher) is getting ready for her first day back to school following the death of her mother Cara (Shana Rappold) in a car accident. She lives with her little sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) and their therapist father Will (Chris Messina). Sadie wears an old dress that belonged to her mother. When she gets to school, she meets with her friend Bethany (Madison Hu), along with some other girls led by the callous and obnoxious Natalie (Maddie Nichols). After Natalie makes insensitive comments, Sadie calls her a bitch, leading to Natalie shoving Sadie and spilling a drink all over the dress. Sadie cries and goes home to change.

Will is visited by a disturbed man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), who pleads with Will to speak with him. After some hesitance, Will agrees and listens to Lester’s story. He was accused of killing his children after they were telling him of an unseen entity that was haunting them, which he didn’t believe them about until it was too late. Sadie shows up and puts her dress in the washing machine before getting new clothes, unaware that Lester is in the house. She hears a noise and finds her mother’s art studio trashed, along with Lester’s body hung from a door. Sawyer comes home just as she sees paramedics wheeling Lester out of the house. After talking to police, Will tries to talk to his daughters.

Later, Sawyer tries to sleep but is spooked by her closet door opening hard. When she looks under the bed, she sees a monstrous figure growling at her, causing her to fall out of her bed and hit her lip.

The Harpers later visit another therapist, Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton), to discuss their grief and trouble moving on. After Sawyer mentions what she saw, Dr. Weller tries an experiment where Sadie and Sawyer are together in the room with a red light that turns on and off. In the middle of things, Sawyer sees the monster again and wets her pants.

At night, Sadie listens to a recording from the session between Will and Lester, while Sawyer wanders the halls with her night light. Sadie finds a page from a notebook in the trash, and when she scribbles over it with a pencil, she sees the same monster that has been haunting her sister. Sawyer hears a voice and rolls her night light down the hall, where she hears it get stomped. She goes to the kitchen and accuses Sadie of trying to scare her until she finds the page that Sadie was looking at.

When Sadie returns to school, she asks Bethany to give her a ride to the Billings home. While it looks abandoned, with garbage everywhere, Lester’s widow Rita (Marin Ireland) is still living there in squalor and has lit candles everywhere. She thinks Sadie is there to torment her like everyone else does, but she tries to ask Rita about what Lester and their daughters had seen before they died. Rita says her children called it “The Boogeyman” and that it thrives in the darkness while also tricking children by mimicking familiar voices. After thinking she sees the Boogeyman, Rita fires her rifle, forcing Sadie to run back to Bethany’s car.

Sadie goes back home and gets annoyed with Sawyer talking about the Boogeyman. She shuts the door and hears a knocking, but when she goes to tell Sawyer off again, the door breaks open, and something appears to force its way down Sadie’s throat. She wakes up in her bed as if it was a nightmare, but she coughs profusely. She walks out of her room and sees Sawyer talking to her as if they both have seen the same thing. Will comes in holding a box of Cara’s belongings to dispose of, which Sadie gets upset about. She takes the box downstairs and finds other old belongings, like her mom’s lighter and a video camera featuring a clip of Cara and Sadie when she was a baby.

Bethany later suggests to Sadie that they hang out. She invites Bethany, plus Natalie and two other girls – Cassidy (Leeann Ross) and Anne (Rio Sarah Machado) – to her house. They get bored after a while until Sadie mentions finding a stash of drugs from her mom. They smoke a joint but Sadie starts coughing too hard. She goes into her room and pulls out what seems to be a string before Bethany comes to help her. Natalie makes things worse by recording and then making Sadie get locked in a closet. As she tries to get out, the Boogeyman makes an appearance trying to get Sadie until she is let out. She slaps Natalie and then shoves Bethany, believing it was all a deliberate prank despite Bethany saying otherwise. The girls leave the house. Meanwhile, Sawyer is watching TV when Boogeyman appears and throws her against the TV.

Sadie and Will take Sawyer to the hospital, where Sadie resolves to finally put an end to the Boogeyman after being contacted by Rita. She returns to the Billings house after Rita says that she has found a way to kill the monster. However, she attacks Sawyer and uses her as bait to lure the Boogeyman out. Sure enough, Boogeyman emerges and steps across one of Rita’s traps that fire shotguns at his face. Unfortunately, he is still alive and rips Rita in half before trying to go after Sadie. She manages to get out of the house, but when she hears from Will bringing Sawyer home, she also realizes Boogeyman is going to find them there. Sadie then hears what sounds like Boogeyman grabbing Will and Sawyer.

Sadie runs back home and manages to find Sawyer. They bring Christmas lights into the basement to try and find Will. The Boogeyman stalks them and attacks when the lights are unplugged. The sisters then use hair spray with their mom’s lighter to burn Boogeyman until the spray runs out. Sawyer douses the Boogeyman with lighter fluid, and Sadie throws her lighter at him, setting the monster on fire before it spreads through the whole house. The Boogeyman crumbles to ashes as the Harpers flee the burning house.

The family returns to Dr. Weller, looking to move forward from their trauma together. Just as they start to leave, Sadie hears Dr. Weller calling her to come back inside, but she is not in her office. Sadie then hears the closet door opening and starts to cautiously approach it before Dr. Weller comes back. Sadie then simply shuts the door.

The Harper family - sisters Sadie and Sawyer plus father Will - are moving on from the loss of the girls' mother in a car accident. Will, a therapist, is visited by a man named Lester Billings, whose children were killed by a mysterious monster. After Lester is found dead, the monster, known as "the Boogeyman" begins to haunt Sadie and Sawyer.

Sadie learns about the monster from Lester's widow Rita, who is left living in squalor and paranoia, but she tells Sadie that the monster thrives in darkness. After a failed party with Sadie's friends, where Boogeyman terrorizes her, the monster attacks Sawyer and puts her in the hospital. Rita contacts Sadie with a plan to kill the monster, but she uses Sadie as bait to lure Boogeyman into a trap. While the trap works, Boogeyman lives and kills Rita. Sadie then runs home as she realizes Boogeyman is going after Will and Sawyer. Together, the family sets Boogeyman on fire, but their house goes up in flames too.

After visiting another therapist as a family and seeming ready to move on, Sadie is seemingly still haunted by the Boogeyman's presence.