Boogeyman 2 w/ Renee O'Connor on Syfy, Sun. 10/11 @ 11 PM - and it's pretty good!

[august]

From Fangoria magazine:

.....Ghost House Pictures is moving forward with a sequel to the 2005
chiller that starred Barry Watson....

....lensing begins next month in Los Angeles, based on a script by
Brian Sieve. Editor-turned-director Jeff Betancourt is at the helm
making his feature debut; however, he’s not falling too far from the
tree. Betancourt served as an editor on both of Ghost House’s GRUDGE
films, as well as EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS.

Veering from the original film’s scotophobic plot, BOOGEYMAN 2 focuses
on a young woman with a more defined fear: that of the boogeyman
himself. What's a gal to do? Why, check herself into a mental clinic to
clear her head and get some help. However, this doesn’t work and the
titular creep soon introduces himself.

The previous BOOGEYMAN took the number-one spot when it debuted in
February 2005 on the way to a final gross of nearly $46 million....

[august]

Lo and behold - guess who's in this film??

Renee O'Connor! This was announced in passing at her website, and then at the recent convention, she said that she is "playing a psychiatrist whose mother had schizophrenia. The patients she works with have different phobias, like ......scared of the Boogeyman!"

Also in the cast are Danielle Savre, who played the cheerleader Jackie on "Heroes," who plays the lead, plus David Gallagher ("Seventh Heaven") and Mae Whitman ("Thief").

A few video blogs are at the Ghost House site. It's being filmed in Hollywood this time, not NZ.

Renee appearing in a low-budget, direct-to-video horrror movie produced by Rob Tapert? Otto's Irresistable Law of Poetic Justice and Karmic Retribution strikes again!

[Davesnothome]

If nothing else, Danielle Savre's appearence in the movie with Renee, simplifies connecting Lucy and Renee to anyone who appears on "Heroes", when playing the 'Kevin Bacon, Six Degrees of Separation' game!

After hating her as the nasty, 'b!t*hy' cheerleader on "Heroes", I wonder if she'll be the nice, innocent girl in this movie? I wonder if people will connect the two roles to the same actress?

Dave

[august]

A brief behind-the-scenes video blog with Renee is now online at the Ghost House site. Mary D meanwhile has a subsite for the film at http://boogeyman2.reneeoconnor.info/index.php

[august]

Mary D posted a link to Fangoria announcing that Boogeyman 2 wll be released on dvd Jan. 8th.

The sequel to the theatrical hit stars the SAW series’ Tobin Bell as Dr. Mitchell Allen, a psychiatrist overseeing several troubled patients at a mental
facility. One of them, a girl named Laura (Danielle Savre from HEROES),
has been tormented by fears of the Boogeyman ever since she saw the
deadly specter kill her parents, and it soon follows her to the
institution and begins a bloody killing spree. Directed by Jeff
Betancourt (editor of the original) from a script by Brian Sieve, the
movie also stars Renee O’Connor, Mae Whitman, David Gallagher, Johnny
Simmons and BUFFY’s Tom Lenk.

The disc includes both widescreen and fullscreen transfers, plus the following extras:

• Audio commentary by Betancourt and Sieve
• Audio commentary by Bell, Savre and producers Steve Hein and Gary Bryman
• Bringing Fear to Life: Makeup Effects from Storyboards to Screen
featurette
• Storyboards

Retail price is $24.96.

There will be a special screening in Los Angeles this Saturday, Oct. 20th, as part of "Screamfest." It's at 2 PM at Grauman's Chinese Mann 6 in Hollywood. The director and Renee will be there.

[august]

A little blurb on this from an interview w/ ROC at Slice Of SciFi.com:

SoSF: (In) ‘Boogeyman 2′, you play Dr. Jessica Ryan. For the viewers who are not familiar with this particular film, what was Dr. Ryan’s area of expertise and tell us about the role?

RO: Dr. Ryan is trying to find an alternative way of helping people with their phobias. The whole movie is, they say it’s similar to one of the ‘Nightmare on Elm Streets.’ Everyone is in this hospital together and it’s about their psychology problems then the horrible things start happening. She’s trying to embrace the passion and help people not run away from their fears but feel supported in looking at their psychological problems. Her nemesis in the movie is Tobin Bell’s character who is much more aggressive and I think cold (chuckle) toward the kids. It was a great cast of young people who have done a lot of other projects and who are more up and coming with new careers and it was just fun to be in a movie that didn’t feel like a slasher film until things started happening. (laughter)

[august]

Little bit of scoop from director Jeff Betancourt at Sci Fi Wire; exceprts:

Jeff Betancourt..... told SCI FI Wire that his sequel has next to nothing to do with the original...

.....

"And I was so excited that they went in a totally different direction, because whatever anyone thinks about the first movie, I felt like it was done. The director and the writer of that film, they told their story completely. I didn't think that anyone really wanted to see that story continue, per se, and so we got a chance to sort of start out fresh."

Boogeyman 2 centers on Laura (Danielle Savre of Heroes), a young woman who has voluntarily checked herself into a mental institution in hopes of overcoming a fear of the Boogeyman, whom she believes killed her parents. When her fellow asylum residents begin dying violent, gruesome deaths that reflect their own worst fears, Laura begins to believe the Boogeyman is back.

............

Betancourt, a veteran editor whose credits include The Grudge, The Grudge 2 and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, explained that he started with a redesign of the Boogeyman himself.

"I wanted a new visual look for him, and the style of the film I wanted to be different, and [the producers at Ghost House Pictures] really embraced that and basically said, 'Here's the script. As long as you stay on budget and make it as scary as possible, then go for it,'" he said. "'Do whatever you want.'"

And then an interview w/ Renee is here, although nothing really new....

[august]

More ROc interviews, with the Fresno Bee:

She's been so selective to avoid anything similar to the long-running action series that her first job after "Xena" was doing Shakespeare.

Although there was some humor in "Xena," O'Connor now is looking for projects that are almost pure comedy. She has a role in the film "Diamonds and Guns," set to be released this year, that has, O'Connor says, "every level of comedy."

She would love to land a television situation comedy but doesn't think that people think of her for that format. She's put off going back to work on TV, but the right part, like a comedy, certainly would make her return to the small screen.

Once a year, O'Connor returns to her sword-swinging days: She attends the annual "Xena" festival.

"It is a way to stay connected to the root of all this blessing. The fans are so loyal. I may have moved on from Gabrielle and done other things. But the fans continue to follow my career," she says.

And a HUGE on at the Hobo Trashcan site:

Q: Do any favorite moments stand out from that time (i.e. filing XWP) in your life?

A: Ted Raimi was another highlight for me. Any time I get an opportunity now to work with Ted, I jump at it.

Our writers were great. They were just given such bizarre scenarios and they pulled through the most wackiest, fantastical scenarios and yet kept the endearment and friendship of the characters along the way. So kudos to those guys.

And then most importantly for me, I thought Rob Tapert was - he's brilliant. He was and he is brilliant. (Laughs.)

[august]

Images from this can be found at Mary D's Site.

[august]

Boogeyman 2 premieres on Sci-Fi at 9 PM EDT, Sat. Aug. 16th, and repeats the very next day, at 7 PM on Sun. 8/17.

[august]

I was very pleasantly surprised with this movie. Virtually all of it is set in the hospital - surely a real facility that was borrowed, meaning minimal cost. And so the "look" is as professional as a movie that cost ten times as much - very much like "Gothika" in fact.

Intentionally or not, it borrows an excellent visual from a classic-but-now-forgotten 1971 scary TV movie called "Paper Man," with a guy running down the hallways as overhead lights are extinguished one by one, making it look like the darkness is chasing him.

It has some passing references to the idea that children throughout history across the world have all independently seen this creature, lurking in their closets and in the darkness. But really, there are no supernatural elements to this story - it's all about mysterious murders at the clinic run by Renee O'Connor and her boss, Tobin Bell, a residential treatment facility for young adults incapacitated by phobias (germs, the dark, the Boogeyman, etc.) It's complicated by the fact that the victims seem to be getting killed off by their fears, e.g the guy afraid of the dark gets trapped in the dark, and his escape attempts cause his own death.

The lead character is there because she and her brother witnessed the brutal murder of their parents 10 years earlier: right after the brother said he was convinced that the Boogeyman was hiding in the shadows, sure enough, a dark masked figure jumped out to stab their dad just as he was fixing the light in the hallway.

One downside is that the three lead female characters are all blonde, all about the same size, and it's sometimes difficult to tell which one is which if they aren't speaking, or it's not a close-up.

The dvd version of this clearly had a LOT of gratuitous nudity, which was edited out for tv. Warning: some of the violence scenes are really graphic, bloody and disturbing.

Most significantly, as above, after years of obsessed online fans who can't get jobs in films or tv complaining about Rob Tapert and how ROC needs to save her career by avoiding any of his low-budget, horror/gore schlock (like Xena getting her head cut off) ..... Renee's formal official response was.... to co-star in a low-budget, direct-to-dvd bloody horror film for Rob Tapert that features as its climax ....

To view, use your mouse to select the text:

Renee graphically getting her head cut off!

Ah, karma.....

[august]

The good news is that this made the top 10 for the network for the week. But almost any movie in primetime is guaranteed to do that. The bad news is that for a 9 PM Saturday premiere, it did 25-30% lower than direct-to-dvd projects usually do. Possibly the Olympics siphoned away some viewers, although they clearly didn't hurt Eureka or Ghost Hunters...

Eureka 1.9
Ghost Hunters International 1.7
ECW 1.2
Stargate Atlantis 1.2
Scare Tactics 1.1
Black Swarm 1.1
Boogeyman 1.0
Final Destination 2 1.0
Cursed 1.0
The Grudge 0.9

Source: Nielsen Galaxy Report, 8/11/08 to 8/17/08

[august]

This is rerunning tomorrow, Sun. 10/26/ at 1 PM.

[august]

Sci-Fi is rerunning this on Sun. 2/15 at 11 AM as part of a Ghost House double feature: it's followed at 1 PM by Rise: Blood Hunter (w/ Lucy Liu.) Renee can also be seen in Monster Ark the preceding day at 5 PM, and Josh Becker's Harpies is on at 3 AM.

[august]

This is being rerun tonight (Sun. 10/11) on Syfy at 11:00 PM.