Monster Check Complete

Unpacking "The Boogeyman"

*Warning — there are spoilers for the film The Boogeyman in this article.*

🔥 Note: I’ve said it before in many of my other essays and will undoubtedly say it again and again — but what I LOVE about this particular film is that everyone has figured out that it’s a movie about trauma. Rob Savage has even said it. It makes my cold dark heart very happy indeed that others are seeing the real effects of trauma being explored in Horror, even it’s less blatantly obvious as it is here.

ETA: I LOVED this analysis from Shaina over at Kindling — check it out!

The Trauma Line

I’m a huge fan of Stephen King. I’m also a huge fan of Rob Savage. So of course I was delighted when news of The Boogeyman film was announced. I was nervous, as I usually am when it comes to adaptations. So far, Mike Flanagan has been the only one to convince me he can take King’s work to the next level. But I was curious about this one.

And it did NOT disappoint! In fact, it fit so well with this series, I was bursting at the seams to get to this essay and transcribe the ping-pong thoughts I had while watching the film.

In true King fashion, the “monster” in both the book and the film is a metaphor for the very real human horrors we deal with in the face of trauma, loss, grief, and the human condition.

And we’ll get there — but first I have to praise the film for giving off the creepy vibes throughout the movie. While not a “jump scare” horror movie, the tension filled buildup of the setting, scenery, and sensory details sets the tone perfectly for The Boogeyman’s appearances. The slow but steady burn of evil lurking around every corner reminds me of another great book-to-film adaption with the same approach — The Black Phone (which incidentally was based on the short story by Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill). While The Boogeyman has less scares and gore to its name, it makes up for it in character development and the underlying metaphors attached to the supernatural entity.

One thing I loved about this film (and others who approach it similarly) — the “monster” doesn’t attach itself to families for no good reason. There’s always an emotional tug or pull that brings the monster or in this case, boogeyman, to the story. For Dr. Harper (Chris Messina), Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), that emotional tug is grief and trauma as the matriarch of the family has passed a few months before the start of this story.

And the entry point into this family and their grief for the monster is Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), a man who is tormented by the death of his children. Everyone suspects he did it, but Lester shares information about The Boogeyman with Dr. Harper in an attempt to get hime to see the truth. Of course, Dr. Harper (though heavy in his grief) does not believe him. Lester, sensing the disbelief and not knowing what else to do, walks around the house and depending on how you view the scene… he is either murdered by The Boogeyman or he kills himself. Either way, Sadie is the one to find a dead Lester Billings hanging from her mother’s art closet and thus begins the hunt for The Boogeyman.

And oh, what a tasty meal he has to choose from when feeding off the fear, grief, and trauma of the Harper family.

One of the reasons this works so well is that the characters stay rooted in their trauma and grief in very raw ways. Dr. Harper doesn’t know how to even handle his own grief, let alone help his daughters. He clams up, refuses to engage, and redirects their attempts to talk about it. As a psychiatrist himself, this disconnect feels both odd and strangely realistic. Some of the most fucked up people I’ve known are those in mental health positions and yet they are such important advocates for mental health. But those who are familiar with therapy know that it’s not for the faint of heart. Rob Savage in talking with Inverse said¹:

“Therapy is terrifying. Opening yourself up is terrifying. Therapy is extremely exposing. It’s about speaking to your inner darkness and not letting it fester and turn into something monstrous.”

What really stands out though is that even after Lester Billings death, Dr. Harper still doesn’t meet his children’s needs. This inability to truly be there for his children matched with the compounding grief and trauma the two girls are facing is precisely why The Boogeyman gains ground in the house.

In fact, in an interview with Inverse, Sophie Thatcher who plays Sadie says:

“At its core, the movie is about a family that is grieving. And I feel like building that realness and having something that everybody can relate to creates a connection within the viewer to the movie. You immediately put yourself in their shoes and that makes the movie more visceral and real.”

Pinging off of that is the very recognizable role that Sadie plays in the film. She is the “parentified child” taking care of her younger sister (at times, even her dad) while trying not to succumb to her own grief. It wasn’t surprising that the “defeat” of the monster comes at the hands of the sisters joining together to take it down. This follows a timely (yet sad) trend in horror movies where the saviors or the “final girl” are actually young people (M3gan, The Black Phone, IT, etc).

In many ways, that’s also because children have an easier time accepting horror. Sawyer’s insistence that someone is in her room isn’t a plea for attention, it’s an acceptance. It’s a terrifying acceptance. And even if it were a plea for attention — it would be with good reason given that she’s experienced two recent deaths in her life, scary unexplained experiences, and her father won’t even talk to her about what’s going on. Of course she is terrified but she (like many children) are also smart about their intuition. Sawyer knew the minute The Boogeyman was inside her home, it meant to do harm.

The metaphor between The Boogeyman’s rise to power (through grief, sadness and loss) and its torment of the Harper family is so powerfully resonate to the way we, as humans, try to push through the pain and acceptance. The harder we push against our own grief and trauma, the more insidious the boogeyman becomes, infecting everything.

The thing about trauma, grief, sadness, etc, is that it’s not one and done. We don’t just “heal” and then say “bye!” to it. This is highlighted by the end of the movie when Sadie, Sawyer and their dad attend the in-person therapy session. They “think” they’ve dealt with the pain and grief, but we know that’s not true by Sophie’s character hearing the Monster’s voice at the end.

I think The Boogeyman, besides being a genuinely good horror film is how Rob Savage was able to incorporate so many metaphorical layers. In the same interview with Inverse he says,

“Horror is great about speaking to all the things that we don’t really want to discuss, all the taboo subjects that we all think about and worry about but don’t want to verbalize. This really is a movie about mental health and leaning on other people and not isolating yourself when you’re going through periods of trauma and grief. The thing that I was really trying to lock into and what the creature really represents to me is the unspoken. It’s about this family who are all going through their own individual grieving process but haven’t figured out ways to communicate their own trauma.”

The Storytelling

I adore when horrors/thrillers kill it from the first scene (literally). We see just enough in the beginning of The Boogeyman to get creeped the fuck out. It’s not over the top or graphic and the only “gore” we see is a splattering of blood on a picture frame. But, wow. What a way to set the tone and vibe for the story. This beginning told me everything I needed to know about how the rest of the film would unravel in terms of style and tone.

🔥 Side note: This is one of my favorite tricks to studying storytelling that I learned from my horror writing teacher — watch the first 5 minutes of any movie you’ve already seen and see if the vibe/tone/story is alluded to in that first few minutes. Good storytelling usually will!

Something I found interesting (and awesome) is that while this film is adapted from the short story King wrote, it’s actually expanded to focus on Dr. Harper and his girls, when originally, Lester Billings was the focus of the short story. Here’s a great article about the differences between the short story and the film and I have to say that I’m impressed with the changes and the direction they went in — and apparently so was King!

I also love when films use symbology to complement a theme and I thought it was very smart to have symbols used as a gateway between Sadie and her mother and ultimately, Sadie and the monster.

The lighter is an obvious one. Sadie’s character finds her mother’s lighter (and pot) and the lighter becomes a sort of emblem of empowerment and quite literally, a way to fight the monster. It’s also highly symbolic of the theme here in terms of bringing trauma, grief, and the darkness “into the light.”

The dress and the subsequent soiling of it is such a tender and moving way to showcase Sadie’s grief. She is not getting what she needs from her father in this way and it feels poignant that when that’s the case, she turns to something of her mothers for comfort. The scene where her snotty classmates squishes the foul food onto the dress is hard to watch. Sophie Thatcher, who plays Sadie, is known for her acting skills (you kind of have to be if you’re in a show like Yellowjackets) but when she finds the ripped up portrait of her mothers — it was hauntingly beautiful. I felt her grief in those moments.

I’m really pleased with this movie — from casting to storytelling to exploring trauma — I feel like this is such a perfect example of how to use the genre to explore things we fear but don’t realize we do like trauma, grief, loss, and facing the truth.

1. https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/boogeyman-movie-sophie-thatcher-rob-savage-interview

Want to see what films could be up next for this series? Check out my Letterboxd account → https://boxd.it/pktaA