Not to be confused with 2005’s Boogeyman; this is a little gem from 1980. One night, little Lacey and Willy grow tired of their mother’s drunken, abusive boyfriend, and Willy stabs him to death. Actually a bad decision, because the guy’s spirit enters the mirror over his girlfriend’s bed, and vows revenge. Flash forward twenty years; Lacey (Suzanna Love) and Willy (Nicholas Love) are living with their aunt (Felicite Morgan) and uncle (Bill Rayburn) on a farm. Lacey is married to Jake (Ron James) and has a son, while Willy has become mute. They’re both still haunted by that night, figuratively and soon literally. Jake, meaning well, forces Lacey to revisit her childhood home, where she encounters the mirror. She breaks it, which guarantees that, “When you break a mirror, you free everything that it’s seen.” Things only get worse for the siblings as family members start dying off, and they have to defeat the pushy ghost once and for all.

The score of the movie is just the beginning of my list of complaints. Besides the use of flutes in an attempt to sound ominous (instead I found myself looking for Oompa Loompas), the opening music sounds suspiciously like the theme for Halloween. Right on the heels of that is another resemblance: a POV shot of Willy walking down the hall with the knife in his hand prominently displayed, a la Michael Myers. In addition, the farmhouse looks exactly like the Amityville Horror house.

Unsurprisingly, the special effects are excruciating, the acting is terrible, and there are numerous plot points that leave you with questions like these: Why do those teenagers need a butcher knife for cooking hot dogs? Why does the mirror keep bursting into flame? Why is that girl giving herself a haircut in her panties?

If you want a laugh, no reason not to see this one, unless you expect an actual boogeyman.
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