Don't Look Under the Bed

I’m going to be real here. The 1999 DCOM, “Don’t Look Under the Bed,” looks like it could have some potential to being a good children’s film, but it’s very messy. I know there is an audience out there for this film, but when I saw it, nothing came off as scary.

The film is about a girl named Frances, played by Erin Chambers, who is starting high school a year early. There are some bizarre events occurring all over her town. Dogs are on people’s roofs, alarms going off hours early, eggs are dropped on a teacher’s car, gelatin in the school’s swimming pool, and the letter “B” spray-painted on lockers and all over town. Frances gets blamed for these pranks, but she is completely innocent and doesn’t know what is going on.

Then she meets Larry Houdini, played by Eric “Ty” Hodges II, who says he will help Frances, and tells her he is an imaginary friend. This is where you can see that it is clearly a kid’s film. Because kids are known to having imaginary friends. I was one of those kids growing up that had imaginary friends. I used to act like a teacher reading stories to a group of school children when there was no one there. I must have really loved story time in school to be doing that often.

Another way you can tell this is a children’s film is when Larry tells Frances that the villain is called the “Boogeyman,” played by Steve Valentine. Now that is a cliched villain name for a children’s film. Of course, if you’re in high school, you would not believe in such a thing called the “Boogeyman,” like Frances doesn’t.

Jake Sakson plays Frances’ little brother, Jake Sakson, who is in remission from surviving leukemia. Their older brother, Albert, played by Nathan Stevens, donated his bone marrow, even though Frances wanted to donate.

Guys, I’m sorry, but if I was younger, maybe I would have gotten into this, but as an adult, I just saw this as a typical kids flick. Especially the imaginary friends realm, which they teleport to after going underneath a bed. That doesn’t really look anything that fascinating. To children, maybe, but not to adults. If you have kids, they can see this fine, but for adults, I wouldn’t recommend it. If they do see it and love it, great, but I think I will not watch this again after seeing it once.

Tomorrow I will be looking at another strange DCOM in “Disney Month 2024.”