By Geno McGahee
I love monster movies for the most part. Horror doesn’t produce enough of them. So, I was pretty excited about CUCUY: THE BOOGEYMAN, a SyFy original production, airing on October 13th. Certainly inspired by films like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, IT and JEEPERS CREEPERS, it takes certain elements but maintains its own course and becomes a rather fun and suspenseful ride.
We begin with Gabriel (Madison Rojas) playing video games and being difficult. His mother has had enough and grandma, Blanca (Alma Martinez), goes to get the boy in line. She does so by telling him of the Cucuy, a monster that takes young kids and eats them. He is a monster that takes little boys and girls and puts them into his sack and then later eats them. This is not a good grandmother here and Gabriel is like 10 years old. Blanca definitely needed a punch in the chops. She could have said “hey, be good for your mother or I’m not buying you any more candy bars.” Something. Not this entire “monster is going to kill and eat you” approach.
Gabriel’s brother, Javier (Isaac Arellanes), starts messing around when everyone leaves and scares Gabriel, but comes face to face with the evil and wicked, Cucuy. Now Javier is missing and he is just one of many. There is a definitely Cucuy problem.
Amelia (Bella Stine) is a youngster with hearing aids in both ears and she is having a hard time at school with bullies. I got a feeling that the Cucuy may get involved, but I’ll let you see for yourself on the 13th. Travis (Justin Ellings) and his two skateboarding buddies mess with the poor girl and, Sierra (Isabel Gravitt) targets her as well, calling her smelly or something to that effect. When Sophie (Jearnest Corchado), Amelia’s sister, witnesses the Travis and his buddies picking on her little sister, she goes nut, and drives her car over, hitting one of them in the process. The cops get involved and she gets arrested, but she had every right to hit those pricks. They were older than the girl by a few years and they were stealing her hearing devices. I don’t know any youngsters that have that issue, but I know some elderly people that do and if young punk kids stole my grandfather’s hearing aid or even his Viagra, I would hit them with a car too.
Sophie is placed under house arrest for six months and this is when she starts using her telescope…mostly to look at Milo (Pedro Correa), who works out in front of a window without a shirt on. He may have been inspired by Kevin Spacey in AMERICAN BEAUTY. Sorry to bring up Kevin Spacey in this review, but the comparison is there. Spacey did work out topless and bottomless in front of a window in that flick. It’s sort of the same.
She turns her attention to her new neighbor, Boyd (Jack Erdie), and starts suspecting him of the murders of the missing kids in the town. When Sierra goes missing, she becomes more suspicious and Sierra’s encounter with the Cucuy was very well done. She takes her cell phone to take a selfie and every time she clicks, she gets a shot of the Cucuy behind her. It was awesome and perhaps the Cucuy just wanted to photobomb her. I don’t know. But when she got scared about it, he may have gotten offended and that’s why he took her away. As we learned in JEEPERS CREEPERS 3, monsters can have feelings too.
The Cucuy becomes more and more frequent as the film goes on and I really did love his look and presence. They did a really good job of mixing CGI with a real guy in a monster suit, rather than going the whole CGI route, which never turns out well. When the Cucuy makes it personal by taking Amelia, Sophie teams up with her mother, Rebecca (Marisol Nichols), and Milo, to go into the evil Cucuy lair and take him the hell out.
CUCUY: THE BOOGEYMAN is a really good horror flick. At certain times, the suspense is very good. There is enough fun factor here to keep your interest and the cast did a tremendous job. The acting was solid across the board, and I especially liked Jearnest Corchado and Jack Erdie. The ending was satisfying and fun, even though I was sort of upset that so many people got saved. I would have liked to see the Cucuy eat some people. Hey, you can’t have it all.
I highly recommend this CUCUY: THE BOOGEYMAN. Watch it on October 13th on SyFy. It’s definitely worth a watch!
Rating: 7/10
