The Boogeyman Movie Review: A new film adaptation based on Stephen King, The Boogeyman by Rob Savage, is the 52nd, confirming the interest of cinema in the immense repertoire of the master of horror. The film stars Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets), Chris Messina (Air), Vivien Lyra Blair (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Marin Ireland (The Umbrella Academy), Madison Hu (Bizaardvark), LisaGay Hamilton (Vice – The Man in the Shadows) and David Dastmalchian (The Boston Strangler), is in theaters from June 1 with 20th Century Studios and 21 Laps.

High schooler Sadie Harper and her sister, little Sawyer, are devastated by the recent death of their mother, not even receiving the right support from her father, Will, a therapist unable to deal with her pain and that of her daughters of her. One day a mysterious man shows up at Will’s door asking to be heard, to be helped to free himself from a disturbing presence that has been tormenting him for some time and does not want to leave him alone. This entity, which feeds on the pain of others and especially families, will soon enter the lives of Will, Sadie, and Sawyer with dramatic consequences.

The Boogeyman – Fear, trauma, and mourning in the film based on King

The Boogeyman by Rob Savage, inspired by the 1978 story of the same name by Stephen King (in Italy entitled Il baubau) featured in the anthology Night Shift (A sometimes they return), on a screenplay by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place – A quiet place) and Mark Heyman (The Black Swan), adapts the story that the writer had set in a psychiatric study by introducing the figures of Will’s daughters and expanding the plot. 

From the beginning, we see and hear the boogeyman, and we also understand what he is capable of. In particular, it is little Sawyer who feels his presence strongly: frightened by the dark, she sleeps with the lights on, asks her father to look under the bed before saying goodnight, and looks frightened at the closet in her bedroom with the door slightly open where she believes that the “monster” can be hidden. 

Her older sister Sadie, like her father, doesn’t believe her, busy managing the void left by her beloved mother and facing the wickedness of bullies at school. But soon both will be forced to change his mind by facing something supernatural.

The film re-proposes many themes dear to King: the deepest fears and pains that in his stories often turn into demonic presences, see IT and the traumas of the characters on which the “thing” feeds; and the protagonists are often children and adolescents not listened to by adults and in some cases abused, who however find the inner strength to rebel against evil.

In The Boogeyman, an attempt is made to reproduce the disturbing spirit of the story, and in general of King’s universe, made up of horror but also of a lot of macabre ironies, adding elements that wink at the younger audience with certainly not random quotations to an already cult series like Stranger Things, and we let you find out how. 

But the result appears unconvincing, as it chooses to emphasize the hackneyed dynamics of classic horror: the long moments of waiting followed by the sudden appearance of the present to make the spectator jump on his seat, the cellars, the wardrobes, the dark closets den of evil presences, the struggles between good and evil always directed in the same way.

The Boogeyman: conclusion and Evaluation

Rob Savage’s film has little suspense and in some stretches it also turns out to be boring and with predictable implications, failing to make the most of Stephen King’s “material”, and a theme, that of mourning, the fulcrum of evil and pain that “animates” the boogeyman, who in recent years has been at the center of horror films of great depth, such as Hereditary – The Roots of Evil by Ari Aster. A metaphor that deserved a more accurate treatment in a genre that in 2023 can no longer be limited to a superficial and already seen horror story.