The Boogeyman Director On Horror Lore & Stephen King's Approval (2024)

In The Boogeyman, high schooler Sadie Harper and her younger sister Sawyer are still reeling from the loss of their mother. Their father, Will, a therapist, is stuck in his own grief and unable to give them the support or comfort they need. When a new patient shows up at their home desperate for help, he brings a demonic entity with him. This terrifying entity latches onto the Harper family and begins spreading fear and turmoil through the home as it feeds off their suffering.

The Boogeyman features a star-studded cast, including Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, Marin Ireland, LisaGay Hamilton, and David Dastmalchian. The Boogeyman, an adaptation of Stephen King's short story of the same name, is written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman based on a story by Beck and Woods. The movie is directed by Rob Savage.

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Screen Rant spoke with Rob Savage about his new horror movie, The Boogeyman. He explained the extensive lore of the Boogeyman, the design of the monster, and how this adaptation expands Stephen King's original short story. Savage also praised The Boogeyman cast and reveals how, for one character, the movie starts in the third act of their own horror movie.

Rob Savage on The Boogeyman

Screen Rant: Rob, every time I walk by a dark room, I get this unnerving feeling that something is staring at me thanks to The Boogeyman! This is one of those films that blew me away, it's definitely felt more like a haunted house movie than a creature feature, which I absolutely love. Can you talk to me about the collaboration process working with Stephen King's short story and expanding that?

Rob Savage: I came on board. I did this movie Host, and I got offered this right off the bat of that. There was already a script that existed by Beck and Woods who did A Quiet Place. I developed it off in a very different direction, but they laid this great foundation, and had come up with a really cool idea of how to expand the short story. Which is basically just two people in a therapy session talking for eight pages.

They came up with the genius idea of having that be the inciting incident for a big movie or a bigger movie. This character comes in, and then almost infects this family with a demonic presence and that becomes our story. From there, it was me and Mark Heyman, who I worked with on the script, we were just trying to build it out, but make sure it felt true to the short story. Mostly true to King like it felt like it could sit on the shelf with the rest of the Stephen King adaptations.

Did Stephen King provide any notes on any of your scripts?

Rob Savage: Yeah, a couple. He was very kind of hands off. He knew that we were building this out into our own thing and he wanted us to feel free to do that. He gave some great notes. He really loved the script and he was always kind of shouting out about the movie as we went into production. He gave a couple of notes on the edit, but he loved it when we showed it to him. Everyone breathed a big sigh of relief.

You created a whole lore Bible for The Boogeyman. What's a piece of the lore Bible that audiences may not have picked up on, but impacted your approach as a director?

Rob Savage: We kind of had this idea that the creature, like you said like a haunted house movie, we went by Insidious rules. That this creature wasn't a physical thing that's bound to the house. That wherever there's darkness this thing can manifest. That even though it's a creature ultimately, and its flesh and blood, it can manifest through darkness it can kind of materialized like something spiritual. So it means that when Sophie goes to Rita's house to try and get information, the creature can follow her wherever she goes.

What's something from that lore Bible that would surprise audiences?

Rob Savage: We kind of had this idea of the creature being almost like Freddy Krueger. That it collects the souls of the people, the souls that it's reaped. And so we had the creatures voice made up of all the voices it's mimicking. So it mimics certain people in the house, but also we've got a whole cast of people from all around the world speaking different languages and we built that into the voice of the creature. So it's voice is almost made up of all these screaming tortured souls.

David Dastmalchian plays the person that goes to see the therapist to talk about this. Can you talk to me about his role in this, compared to the short story's original version of that character?

Rob Savage: It's different, but I think it kind of shares the same DNA. Both of us wanted this character to be much less abrasive and odious than in the short story. In the short story he's very aggressive, he's a very certain kind of person. We wanted our Lester Billings to be more empathetic. We wanted him to be someone that the audience wanted to invest in, but also felt like he could switch like that [snaps] at any moment. David's so great at playing that. He can play that vulnerability, and then you just see the tiniest little change in his eyes, and suddenly it's like, "Oh, this guy's going to kill me." He plays that scene so beautifully.

Talk to me about the actual design of the Boogeyman, because it is terrifying. What went into the design and how did you come up with that concept?

Rob Savage: The brief I gave to the designers is the Boogeyman is just the name that we call this as kids. This isn't the Boogeyman. Don't think of it like this. This is an ancient evil that's been around as long as there has been darkness. This thing, you've got to imagine it stalking caveman as they gather around their fire existing out in the darkness. It's an ancient primordial thing, and we wanted it to feel weathered. Its skin was like tan leather and it had to feel like something bigger than just the Boogeyman. So we took a long time to get that design right. I don't think we locked it until maybe a week before we started shooting. So it's really down to the wire.

Wow, that's incredible. You obviously have a great backstory for this character, but I get the sense that you could tell this backstory later on down the line.

Rob Savage: Yeah, we got into a lot of backstory me and David about where Lester had come from, what he wants from this interaction. We meet him, he's almost in the third act of his own horror movie. He's ready to face this thing down, but there's a whole horror movie that exists before the credits roll that lead him there.

Your cast is phenomenal in this. Can you talk to me about what they brought to their performance that maybe surprised you with what they did when you guys got in front of cameras?

Rob Savage: They all brought so much of themselves, which is the thing that I'm grateful for. Chris, especially really loves to play around with lines and they're all so collaborative. We had the script and we'd shoot a couple of takes of the script as written. Then it'd be like, let's play around, let's go off script. Let's improvise. There's an element of humor in this movie that was there in the script, but it's only accentuated through just how funny Vivian is. Some of those lines that get people every single time in the movie she came up with on the day and we work shopped it together.

The amazing thing about Sophie is that, and I didn't realize this until we were shooting, is just how much she carries this movie on her shoulders. She's in almost every single shot of this movie, and just operated at this level of intensity that I know was exhausting. And she was there every day. It felt like we were kind of truly building the movie together with it on both of our shoulders. It's incredible.

About The Boogeyman

Sadie Harper and younger sister Sawyer are still struggling with the death of their mother with very little support from their therapist father Will. When a desperate patient of Will's comes to their home begging for help bringing a terrifying entity with him. This malevolent entity feeds on the pain of the Harper family while spreading turmoil and fear into their home.

Check out our other interview with The Boogeyman star Sophie Thatcher.