I saw the preview for The Boogeyman (2023) when I saw some other movie in the theater. Being on the casual end of a devoted Stephen King fan, I added it to my mental checklist of movies to consider seeing and subsequently forgot about the trailer entirely. I love many a Stephen King book and short story. However, most screen adaptations suck. Lawnmower Man probably bears the dubious distinction of being the most unfaithful King adaptation that was better than its source material. What an awful story. What a terrible movie. The best? It’s probably a toss-up between The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Anyway, I reread “The Boogeyman” short story before watching the movie because I couldn’t remember a thing about it.
“The Boogeyman” (1973 short story)
First published in Cavalier, in March 1973, this story appears in the 1978 collection of short stories by Stephen King, Night Shift.
Summary of the Story
The story opens with the protagonist, Lester Billings, lying on a psychiatrist’s couch. Billings has a confession to make: he’s responsible for his three children’s deaths. He didn’t murder them, but he’s culpable just the same. Billings is 28 years old and already a divorcee. At 21, he and his girlfriend Rita were married in a shotgun wedding—his bride was only 18 and she was pregnant with their child.
Billings is a man of strong opinions and is chauvinistic even for the time (1972-ish). He believes a wife’s role is to serve her husband. His convictions of what constitutes good parenting are just as dogmatic: no co-sleeping, no nightlights, do what you can so your sons don’t become “sissies”.
His hair was thinning, his complexion sallow. His eyes held all the miserable secrets of whiskey.
—Stephen King, “The Boogeyman” (1973)
For pretty much the entirety of this story—only twelve pages—Billings is an unreliable narrator of sorts. King deftly lets us know he’s probably a raging alcoholic and, through Billings’s dialogue, we learn he thinks he’s better than the psychiatrist, Dr. Harper, in whom he’s confiding. Is Billings paranoid? Delusional? Honest? He may be all three.
But is he responsible for his children’s deaths? We learn in the story’s first paragraph that Billings is divorced. Billings tells us that he and his wife, Rita, were in love. But he doesn’t expound on why they divorced. Just that she knew after the third child died. “Rita . . . finally . . . knew . . .”
The official causes of the children’s deaths? I list them below along with their approximate ages. The story is specific on the birth years but vague on the deaths and it’s a little unclear.
- Denny—born (presumably) in 1965, died at approximately 3 yrs. “Crib death, he called it! … The kid was three years old!”
- Shirl—born December 1966, died about a year after Denny. Brain convulsion.
- Andy—born Summer of 1969–“at the end of the year after Shirl’s death” according to an affirmation from Billings. Died in February (probably 1970). Broken neck from climbing out of the crib.
He looked morbidly at his hands, which had thrown dirt on three tiny coffins.
—Stephen King, The “Boogeyman” (1973)
It’s confusing with Shirl. If Denny died at three and Shirl died about a year later, that should put us into 1969. But Rita doesn’t become pregnant with Andy until after Shirl’s death. Oh well. It’s not important
The problem with these causes of death is that’s what was reported. However, Billings believes the boogeyman killed his children. And he believes his actions allowed it to happen. With the first two deaths, the children had complained of seeing the boogeyman and after their deaths, Billings found their closet doors ajar. With Andy’s death, Billings claims to have witnessed the murder…after putting Andy in another room. He knew the boogeyman would come for him. “He was weaker.” What did he do after witnessing Andy’s death? Well, he went to a diner and had half a dozen cups of coffee, of course! Upon his return home, he called the police and filed a false report. They ruled Andy’s death an accident.
SPOILER AHEAD!
Click here to skip the next paragraph to avoid the spoiler.
Do not read this paragraph if a spoiler will bother you. Just skip to the next bold heading below. After Billings’s time with Dr. Harper is up, the psychiatrist convinces him to schedule appointments with the nurse twice weekly to work through his survivor’s guilt. But when Billings goes to do so, the nurse isn’t there. He returns to the doctor’s office to find the closet door ajar. The boogeyman steps out, part way through removing his disguise. The story ends here and the reader must imagine Billings’s reaction beyond the one physiological one the author shares with us.
So did I like the 1973 “The Boogeyman” short story?
Yes! There is only one major scene, so it’s a compact story. The one where Billings gives the reader the full story as he relates it to Dr. Harper. It’s relatable and it’s believable. Even for a story like this. What do I think killed Denny, Shirl, and Andy? Parental neglect. I’m not victim-blaming by any means. However, that’s what I believe the theme is.
I know the movie isn’t going to be 100% faithful. I’ve been careful not to read any reviews yet because the movie deserves my uninfluenced opinion. Of course, my preexisting opinion after rereading the story cannot be helped. But I contend that that’s part of the fun of seeing adaptations in the first place, right? I can live with it being less than 100% faithful to the written story. I’m more interested in whether the movie does the story any justice or if it simply capitalizes on Stephen King’s name.
I’ll wait to read any of those reviews after I’ve watched the movie. Just let it be known that my expectations are middling at best. Just as they were when I saw Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Both times I was impressed. I think I’ve employed a good strategy: go in not expecting much and the chances for a movie wowing you go up.
The Boogeyman (2023 movie)
Details
Director: Rob Savage
Writers: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman
Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair
Run time: 98 minutes
Summary of the Movie
Dr. Will Harper (Chris Messina) is a recently widowed father of two daughters and works out of his home as a therapist. After driving his kids to school and returning home, Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) lets himself into Dr. Harper’s office and asks for help. After only a few moments with Billings, Harper excuses himself to call the police. He believes Billings is both unstable and dangerous.
Meanwhile, Harper’s oldest daughter Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) has an embarrassing moment with some school bullies and returns home to clean up and, presumably, take the day off. Unfortunately for her, she gets caught right in the middle of another tragedy when she discovers Billings dead in a closet, having apparently hanged himself.
Harper’s youngest daughter Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) has her problems too. She sees monsters in her closet and under her bed; the implication is that she’s seen them for a while now. The poor girl has lights everywhere including a glowing globe she cuddles like a teddy bear.
This is where the boogeyman comes in. It harasses the Harper family while Sadie has to rise to the occasion to protect herself and her sister while investigating this relentless monster. To be victorious over this supernatural foe, the Harpers will have to stick together. They’ll also have to believe each other.
So did I like the 2023 The Boogeyman movie?
[This section contains spoilers.]
No, I didn’t like the movie. Filmmakers have had fifty years to adapt this story to the screen and the movie is so unlike the story that it seems fair to say that using Stephen King’s name was just a way to garner some credibility with moviegoers. Understandably, the writers had to flesh out the world and the characters to take a 12-page story into a 98-minute movie. I’m not upset about that. What disturbs me is that there are only a few elements from the story that are presented in the movie: Dr. Harper, Lester Billings, Rita Billings, dead children, and the boogeyman. The boogeyman is so generic a monster that no one can claim copyright to it. The three characters I mentioned could have any name. Dead children are a common enough plot device as well. This is all generic.
So what exactly makes this movie a Stephen King movie? The genre? The title? According to this Wikipedia article, there are 80 horror movies released, or slated for release, in 2023. This movie doesn’t stand out from the others. Except that it’s based on King’s work.
I said I was going to this film with low expectations. However, I think I was fooling myself. I anticipated that the movie would focus on Lester Billings and his grief around his feeling responsible for his children’s deaths. Maybe we’d get the events leading up to those deaths played out onscreen. Instead, the Billings character shows up for what is essentially a cameo appearance and the cameo doesn’t advance the movie’s plot very well. It just creates a scene and perhaps garners a nod of recognition from nerds like me who read the story.
If I couldn’t have the Billings character fully developed my next wish was for a similar treatment for Dr. Harper. From the beginning, this is what I thought we’d get. Chris Messina does a wonderful job portraying a widower trying to keep his grief in check. He has the mannerisms of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner in Avengers (2012). He’s both warm and guarded. He is refined and respectable. I didn’t see his shortcomings as a father so much as I was told about them. “You never listen!” Sadie barked at him more than once. Instead, I saw a father bantering with his kids while driving them to school, tucking Sawyer into bed and checking for monsters under the bed and in the closet while doing so, and trying to give Sadie space when she demanded it.
I’m not a film scholar (but everyone’s a critic) so I can’t say whether it’s the direction or the writing that made this movie underwhelming. Probably both. Again, Chris Messina does a good job with his role. Vivien Lyra Blair is compelling. Sophie Thatcher is too, albeit less so than the other two. So I can’t blame them.
I could certainly blame the supporting characters. Particularly lead mean girl Natalie (Maddie Nichols). It’s hard to blame the actor. I think she did the best she could with a terribly written character. Indeed, Sadie’s entire circle of friends (frenemies, even) is peopled by one-dimensional characters with no meaningful opportunity for development. They’re not believable and they are criminally clichéd. I imagine they were included to build our sympathy for Sophie. Instead, I pitied the decision to include them. They were unnecessary. Even Sadie is fairly one-dimensional. Again, I can’t blame the acting. It’s got to be the writing, the direction, the editing, or some combination thereof.
Speaking of writing. I do think it’s lacking. Let’s start with the boogeyman. Rita (Marin Ireland)—her role is only a notch or two above Dastmalchian’s regarding cameo status—tells Sadie that she believes the boogeyman has always existed. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how. The monster is hapless. It walks right into Rita’s trap and it’s afraid of the light. A monster that isn’t cunning isn’t nearly as frightening as a clever one. Are we to believe that a monster who has existed for millennia and can grapple with its victims, throw them into TVs, and knock over shelves is too stupid to trip breakers and, oh I don’t know, flip light switches and break bulbs?
Speaking of lights…I forgot to mention that this movie is set in a universe where flashlights haven’t been invented yet. Because no one carries one. No one even uses the light on their phones when the boogeyman comes around.
The solution to the problem is obvious in this movie and the audience knows it the whole time. I understand that movies like these ask us to suspend our disbelief and I do suspend it. I don’t believe a boogeyman exists for example. But I’ll grant it its existence in a movie for the sake of a good story. This movie takes it a step too far. It demands that viewers believe that reasonably intelligent people will always make dumb decisions when they have more sensible alternatives. It insults us all.
This movie had great potential, but it didn’t need to be a Stephen King adaptation—because it hardly is. However, it squanders an opportunity to explore the Harper family’s grief. Therefore, it fails to connect with the audience and we fail to identify with the characters. These heroes are disposable and they are forgettable. Cheap jump scares are startling (but I thought one scene was brilliant); they are not the same as creating an honestly frightening movie.
Should you watch it? Sure, if that’s what the consensus is from everyone around you. Make some popcorn and prepare yourselves for reasonable entertainment. Ignore the plotholes and superficiality and you’ll probably be okay.
