On June 1, 2023, The Boogeyman, a new horror movie based on a short story by Stephen King, premiered in theaters. The signs were good that “The Boogeyman” could be a successful adaptation, because director Rob Savage has made “Host” one of the scariest films of all time – if you believe the results of the “Science of Scare Project”. would like.
FILMSTARTS editor Stefan Geisler met the filmmaker via Zoom for an interview and talked to him about his own experience with the Boogeyman and the possibility of a sequel. But first, we wanted to know what the scariest horror movie of all time is:
So what is the scariest movie of all time?
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Robert Savage: I really enjoy the title, although of course it’s also a bit crazy. By the way, we have two films between the first ten entries. I’m #8 on “Dashcam” and #1 on “Host” – and they haven’t seen “The Boogeyman” yet, so I’m hoping to get that one on the list too. I will not rest until I have the entire top 10 under my control [lacht].
Robert Savage: “Host”. [lacht] I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. Of course I love “Sinister”, don’t get me wrong.
Robert Savage: After I did Host, I got a lot of offers, including this short story. I then chose the project because I had read it as a child and I was afraid of it at the time. I read the script being written by Beckon Woods at the time and it felt like a great opportunity to do a Stephen King movie, which has always been on my wish list. But also to make the definitive Boogeyman movie, because there have been a lot of movies with names like “Boogeyman” or “The Boogeyman” and none of them are particularly good.
What exactly is the bogeyman?
Robert Savage: I really think this is the definitive Boogeyman movie. However, I would like to make a second film and continue the story…
Robert Savage: I feel like a lot of King’s short stories, and especially the Night Shift short stories, are considerably nastier than many of his longer works. In addition to the horror, these usually have an air of humanity and warmth in them. That kind of connection you make with the characters and that flicker of light in the dark is something I really appreciate about King’s work. “The Boogeyman” and his monster, in particular, with its malevolent, nihilistic approach, didn’t feel like it fit into King’s body of work.
The short story itself is only about eight pages long, the rest we developed ourselves, obviously inspired by the short story. But at the end of the day, it’s our own story we’re telling, and we wanted to make sure it belongs in the same work as the rest of King’s stories.
Robert Savage: I was really afraid of ghosts, and I think I probably still am. I was always afraid that there would be a ghostly figure at the foot of my bed. And today, when I wake up at 3 a.m. and feel a cold draft on my neck, that’s still the point where I get scared.
Robert Savage: I think we took inspiration from the short story for this film – about a psychiatrist and a patient who desperately wants to be heard and understood. Although it’s a movie about grief, it’s actually a movie about communication and speaking to the darkness within, especially when you’re going through something traumatic like grief and loss. Our characters, all going through this grief-induced alienation process, go it alone and don’t really know how to talk to each other, ultimately making them less able to deal with the darkness.
We need to lean on and listen to each other and communicate with each other to get through those periods of poor mental health or the periods of darkness in our lives. And that’s what the creature represents to me: all the things that the characters don’t talk about, that they repress. They push that inner darkness away and it condenses into something they will eventually face or digest.
Robert Savage: The boogeyman is actually the first way we, as children, shape the darkness and realize that the world isn’t just mom and dad hugging us. There is indeed evil, there are people and things that want to harm us – and so the Boogeyman is the childish manifestation of that realization. And as we get older, we learn to deal with those fears in different ways, but the Boogeyman is sort of a crash course for kids to deal with anything scary outside of our safe haven.
But at some point, as a parent, you have to familiarize your child with the dangers of the world, you can’t wrap them up and reassure them forever. There are some evil things that the child must ultimately face alone, just as we must ultimately face everything alone.
Robert Savage: Dealing with these feelings is an ongoing process. You have to remind yourself not to open that door for too long and stare into the darkness – even when you know it’s there. Anyone who has gone through a mental health crisis or personal loss knows that coping is an ongoing process. You will never stop missing the person and the person will never stop being present in the life of the bereaved, but the loss becomes something you have to live with on a daily basis.
It was important for us to find out that there is no clear win, but to create an understanding of what needs to be done on a daily basis to get to grips with this and avoid falling into the same trap we put them in at the start of this year. find the movie, when everyone’s mind is isolated from each other.
“The Boogeyman 2” in the style of “Prey”?
Robert Savage: [lacht] I like the description. The creature should feel like something old and primeval. Something that has been around since there was darkness. We call it the Boogeyman, but the Boogeyman and the darkness he lives in encompasses everything you speak of: death, pestilence, and disease. I told the designers to think of this creature as something prowling through the darkness at the edge of a campfire where the cavemen have gathered.
This thing has been around since the beginning of time and is in your closet now and will still be in a hundred years. So it had to feel simple and old. We’ve tried to keep the design as simple as possible – like a child would draw it. And finally, when you see the creature at the end, we wanted there to be that weird Lovecraftian element of body horror. And even after seeing the creature in all its glory, there should still be elements left that remain unexplained.
Robert Savage: Yeah, like “Prey,” but with the boogeyman.