Horror is certainly celebrating the old and new these days, thanks to the success of Jordan Peele’s recent works GET OUT and US, but there is nothing like the old classics like THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, HALLOWEEN and Richard Donner’s original 1976 classic THE OMEN to nurture the new breed of film-makers who are striving to scare as much as the older generation.
And so it goes with the brand-new June 2019 Digital Download release, Luke Jaden’s BOO!, which he directed and co-wrote with Diane Michelle.
In Detroit on Halloween Night, 1980, a middle-aged black man takes a shotgun out of the boot of his car and proceeds to shoot somebody in his house. Nearly 40 years later, a family are greeted with a mystery bag with what appears to be a chain letter and a promise of bad things happening if they don’t pass on the letter to somebody.
The father, James (Rob Zabrecky) promptly burns the letter, much to the chagrin of his younger son, Caleb (Jaden Piner), whilst older daughter Morgan (Aurora Perrineau) is rebellious enough to go and see her boyfriend, Ash (Charley Palmer Rothwell) despite being warned by her mother Elyse (Jill Marie Jones) to stay and watch over Caleb whilst she buries her grief over a previous loss within a wine bottle.
Before long, however, the burning of the letter unleashes numerous paranormal and supernatural experiences that threaten not only to split the family apart due to their horrific intensity, but also to perhaps claim one or two lives in the process…
BOO! certainly knows its’ place in the genre and with a sufficiently motivated atmosphere is going to deliver. A lot of the key attributes of classic horror are all here, coupled with an unnerving electronic-style score that evokes the John Carpenter scores of both HALLOWEEN (1978) and HALLOWEEN III (1982).
Some viewers will sense where everything is going to play its part, but it does result in a reasonably worked-out twist at the end, which fans will revel based on the experience of other horror hits like THE CONJURING, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and THE BABADOOK to name but three.
The gore and shocks are well-balanced and there is a neat little sequence involving a Viewmaster toy that provided a lot of pleasure to an older generation of children. Cinematography from Nicolas Weisnet is solid, a talent who has shot music promos (one for Fifth Harmony when they were together) and shorts along the way.
