The Boogeyman

Sadie Harper is a teenager still raw from her mother's recent death. Her younger sister Sawyer is terrified of the dark. Their father Will is a therapist who has retreated into his practice and can barely look at his daughters — he is present in the house but gone in every way that matters.

A disheveled, frightened man named Lester Billings shows up uninvited at Will's home office. He says he's responsible for his three children's deaths. He describes a creature that found his family, that lives in the dark, that follows fear and grief like a scent. Will asks him to leave. Lester is found dead in the house shortly after — hanged.

The creature has followed Lester in. Sawyer sees it first: something in her closet, a shape that moves when it shouldn't. Will dismisses it as trauma response. Sadie investigates Lester Billings, finds records of his dead children, and begins to understand that what's in their house is real.

The creature escalates — it attacks Sawyer, it kills Will's colleague, it fills the house with dread. It is drawn to fear, and a family in grief is essentially a beacon. Sadie traces the creature's history through other families it has destroyed and learns its nature: it retreats from light, it cannot be reasoned with, and it has been doing this for a very long time.

In the climax, Sadie and Sawyer refuse to hide. They bring the fight to the creature directly — using fire and light as weapons. Sadie wounds it badly and drives it back. It retreats. The family survives, and in the aftermath Will finally comes back to his daughters, the paralysis of grief broken by the shock of nearly losing them entirely.

The creature is not confirmed destroyed. The film ends with the sense that it is still out there — waiting, somewhere, for the next family that's afraid enough.