Boogeyman 3 (2008)

Much like the first movie in this series, Boogeyman 3 has an interesting idea at the heart of it. It's just a shame that the idea is hampered by the dull script from Brian Sieve and the pedestrian direction from Gary Jones. The end result isn't completely horrible, but it's bland and uninteresting from start to finish.

Nikke Sanderson plays Audrey, a young woman who happens to be the daughter of a main character killed off in Boogeyman 2. Unaware of exactly what went down when her father died, Audrey ends up taking ideas from some of his writing that she discovers. Which means that it's not long until the boogeyman comes along. The film then moves to focus on Sarah (Erin Cahill), the actual lead character for the rest of the movie. Sarah is a student, the host of a radio show, and someone who loves to help others in need. When Audrey catches up with Sarah and explains her recent boogeyman-related experiences, Sarah does her best to help. That's not enough, however, and people soon start dying all around Sarah.

There are times when Boogeyman 3 feels like some reworked Elm Street movie, without any impressive gore FX or a decent main character. That's not to say that it's a bloodless affair, it's just neither inventive nor gory enough to make any lasting impression on horror fans.

Cahill is okay in the main role, yet I can think of at least a dozen other actresses from the world of indie horror who could fill her shoes. Mind you, she has more presence than anyone else onscreen, so her being picked for the lead role is no coincidence. The rest of the cast feels so bland and homogenous that I can't even be bothered to highlight any other performances. Oh, there are different character types, for sure, but they all end up just being the same young folk who may or may not meet a sticky end.

There's nothing else worth highlighting either, apart from the last 10 minutes, which provides both a satisfying conclusion to events, and also an unexpected appearance from Jayne Wisener (a young actress best known for her work on some British TV shows).

If you managed to sit through the first movie, and then managed to get through the second movie, there's nothing here so bad that you won't be able to find it passable enough to complete your trilogy viewing (as I did).

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Triple-Feature-Boogeyman-Barry-Watson/dp/B003UN0752/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1411851034&sr=1-1&keywords=boogeyman

Shark Swarm (2008)

Two things surprised me as I watched Shark Swarm the other evening. The first was how long the damn thing was, it clocked in at just over two hours. The second was how good it was. Okay, maybe saying it was good is being a bit generous but it certainly wasn't the low grade schlock I was expecting. No sir-ee. This was more of an enjoyable soap opera style drama with occasional moments of, fairly well executed, shark action. Typical TV movie fare but certainly a step up from the many little films shown in recent years that have thrown a bunch of bad actors together with even worse CGI and given it a catchy name to entice people dumb enough to become intrigued (yes, people like me).

The folk onscreen here may not be at the top of their game but they aren't terrible actors and actresses. John Schneider, Daryl Hannah, Armand Assante, F. Murray Abraham (really? have the mighty fallen so far?) and even the likes of Mimi Michaels and Roark Critchlow do just fine with the melodrama.

The plot is a standard one for this type of film - a big businessman (Assante) is doing his best to buy up a small town and to help him on his way he messes up the local economy by affecting the fishing trade by polluting the surrounding waters. This makes a bunch of sharks act strangely and all different types start swarming together and munching on poor swimmers. One good man (Schneider) isn't won over by the businessman and he also notices the trouble in the water. With his wife (Hannah) and daughter (Michaels) by his side, he tries to right the wrongs that have been done. However, he doesn't realise the full situation until his professor brother (Critchlow) and professor colleague (Abraham) see the big picture.

Written by Matthew Chernov and David Rosiak, there's nothing here to get too excited over but it's perfectly acceptable stuff that can't avoid feeling like "Jaws-lite" in one or two moments. Things could easily have been condensed, or even removed altogether, to get the film down to a zippy ninety minute runtime but it was created as a longer schedule filler and that's how it has to be viewed.

The direction by James A. Contner is just fine. Of course, there's nothing majorly cinematic on display and no major flourishes or camera moves but the big draw, the shark footage, is reasonably well done and the film trots along nicely in between the moments of tension.

As well as the cast members already mentioned, we have John Enos III, Heather McComb, Alan Fudge, Gene Davis, Brent King, Jacleen Heber, Elisa Donovan, Darcy Rose Byrnes, Tiffany Hines and plenty of others giving acceptable performances in an acceptable time-waster of a TV movie.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shark-Swarm-DVD-Daryl-Hannah/dp/B001TJKVD2/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1337341136&sr=1-1