“It’s a story as old as time.” Director Rob Savage here isn’t misremembering the lyrics to the classic Beauty and the Beast song, instead he is describing the myth of the Boogeyman, the monster that lurks in the shadows, ready to feed on your fear. “It’s almost something that we know innately as children”, Savage tells us during our chat for the latest episode of the Inside Total Film podcast. “The Boogeyman lives in the dark spaces of your house – the closet or under the bed – and if you turn on your bedside lamp, you are then safe from the creature.”
The lore of the Boogeyman has been around for centuries, with historians tracing the legend back to as early as the 1500s. It has always existed, haunting us from the darkness, but the monster moved into the spotlight upon the publication of Stephen King’s short story, simply titled The Boogeyman, in the March 1973 issue of Cavalier magazine. That tale has now been brought to the big screen courtesy of director Savage (Host, Dashcam), who admits that given the long history of brilliant King adaptations, he was intimidated by the prospect of taking this one on: “I just tried not to think about it. We knew we wanted this to be a classy adaptation and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best ones, but rather than measure ourselves against De Palma [Carrie], Kubrick [The Shining], and these other great filmmakers, we just always went back to King’s writing which informed how we built out our story. Even the stuff we invented had to feel like it belonged in King’s body of work.”
