Associated as he is now with Spider-Man, it's easy to forget the way Sam Raimi injected electricity into the horror genre 25 years ago with his Evil Dead movies and their 60-mph demon's-eye-view camera shots.

Of course, like a Paganini solo, many hacks have tried but failed to copy his flourishes. So kudos to Stephen T. Kay (whose biggest previous credit was the Sylvester Stallone version of Get Carter). With the lazy filler-thriller Boogeyman, he's one hack who has managed to bloodlessly approximate Raimi's style (minus the humour) -- like a Beatles cover band approximates Day Tripper. It helps that Raimi is one of the producers of the movie and probably stood over Kay's shoulder for the guitar line.

7th Heaven's Barry Watson is the ostensible protagonist of the movie, as Tim Jensen, a twentysomething who returns home to his small town after his mother dies, there to face the titular children's nightmare monster-in-the-dark.

It's not good news for Watson that his character's best scene is played by another actor. Boogeyman blows its wad in its explanatory opening, in which Tim as a child suffers an attack of night frights, seeing piles of clothes become ambulatory in the dark and action figures give him the evil eye. By the time his dad (Charles Mesure) is sucked into the closet by the unseen Mr. B, it's almost anti-climactic.

As an adult, Tim seems to have had the bleep already scared out of him, so lacking in alarm is Watson's acting. Things begin shaking, voices in walls announce his arrival and a closet literally attacks him within minutes after he enters his boyhood home, and the mono-expression of concern he wears throughout the movie implies he's still waiting for something to happen.

Hey, remember us? We're the audience. Waiting for something to happen is our job.

And wait we do for a long-delayed glimpse of said Boogeyman, even as the camera takes us on a dizzying roller-coaster ride of hallways and rooms, and as the deafening sound subsides seconds before each scare -- auditory Pavlovianism that manages to evoke chills even when you know the filmmakers are doing it.

Tim has not one but two leading ladies -- his rich girlfriend Jessica (Tory Mussett), who follows him to his High-Noon-with-Mr.-B, and his childhood gal pal Kate (Emily Deschanel) who shows up with practically no introduction. Make that three if you count the mottled, shrieky ghost of Tim's mom (a criminally-underused Lucy Lawless). Or four if you count Frannie, (Skye McCole Bartusiak). The latter is a prime example of the most overused cliche in horror movies these days: The mysterious, spooky kid who's really, well ... you know.

In the end, even the most expert scary-button-pushing can't save a movie this empty of ideas.
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