Cool, The Makers Of The New ‘Boogeyman’ Movie Want Me To Relive My Childhood Fears

When I was a kid I used to jump from the floor onto my bed at night because I was utterly convinced that a monster named Glen (don’t ask me why I named him Glen) was hiding under the bed-frame and would grab me by the ankles and drag me into hell if my feet got too close.  

Glen had long black fingers with spindly white hair and his nails were sharp and rusty. He was terrifying. So while I’m now a full-grown adult with a job and the ability to think rationally, I’d also like to thank Stephen King and the producers of Stranger Things for assuring my psychologist another 10 sessions by releasing The Boogeyman. 

Ripped from the twisted mind of King, produced by Stranger Things’ Shawn Levy and brought to life by director Rob Savage, who last scared your pants off with the utterly terrifying Host (99 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes), The Boogeyman is the ultimate distillation of all your childhood fears: the unknown, grief, the dark, closets, things under the stairs and (in my case) the extremely large kids I had to face on the footy field when I was a tiny eight year old.  

Okay, probably not that last one, but you get the picture. But you know it’s good because it’s Stephen King, right?  

Since the release of Carrie in 1976, there have been a whopping 41 film adaptations of King’s work, including classics of the genre like The Shining, Children of the Corn, It and now, The Boogeyman.  

There was a reason my parents didn’t let me watch anything with King’s name on it when I was a kid: his stories are incredibly scary. There’s something about them that really gets under your skin. While all his best work features ghosts, monsters and the supernatural, it’s how he roots them in human fears and experiences that makes them stick with you.  

And The Boogeyman is one of his best.  

Quick tidbit: The Boogeyman was first intended to go straight to streaming, but after the film scared the hell out of test audiences, King himself was shown a cut of the movie. Apparently, he liked it so much that he said the filmmakers would be “f**king stupid not to release it in cinemas”.  

This coming from a man who absolutely hated Stanley Kubrick’s rendition of The Shining.  

When you’re thinking about what you might be in for with this movie, it’s important to consider the impact of the cultural juggernaut that is Stranger Things. Levy (who produced The Boogeyman) has produced the show from the beginning and even directed a bunch of episodes, including the absolute banger from Season 4 that saw Max almost taken from us by Vecna (only to be saved by Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”). 

So you’ve got Stephen King, the director of a modern horror classic, and the person who put Kate Bush back into the charts. I reckon The Boogeyman has all the signs of a stunner.  

Just please don’t let Glen come back. 

The Boogeyman is in cinemas now.