The Boogeyman (2023)
Director: Rob Savage
Screenwriters: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman
Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, Marin Ireland, Madison Hu, David Dastmalchian
Finally, another adaptation of Stephen King has arrived. After a stretch without a major King property on the big screen, The Boogeyman brings one of his early short stories back into circulation. The original piece first appeared in 1973 in Cavalier and later as part of King’s Night Shift collection. It’s a succinct, pulpy tale with a single revealing twist — the kind of short that can be thrilling on the page but poses clear challenges when stretched to feature length.
The movie begins by incorporating the short story’s premise: a deeply unsettled man, played by David Dastmalchian, visits a psychiatrist, portrayed by Chris Messina, to confess that a monster — the Boogeyman — is responsible for the deaths of his children. In the film the scene plays out early and briefly, occupying perhaps only a handful of minutes before the narrative shifts. From there, the screenplay expands outward, following the psychiatrist’s family after the death of his wife. The central focus becomes how the Boogeyman latches onto the psychiatrist’s children, Sadie and Sawyer, and how the family struggles to understand and confront the supernatural threat.
Adapting such a short, economical story requires invention, and the filmmakers opt to build an extended domestic drama around the central concept. That choice produces both strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, the film offers a stronger emotional core than the original short, emphasizing themes of grief, loss, and the sometimes-elusive path to closure. These elements provide the actors with material that often feels sincere, and Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair deliver compelling performances as the two children who bear the weight of the haunting. Their work is arguably the film’s emotional anchor, giving viewers someone to root for amid the horror beats.
On the other hand, expanding a compact short story into a feature stretches the premise thin in places. The screenplay spends time searching for narrative momentum, and much of the film follows familiar haunted-house conventions. The structure falls into predictable stages: the initial disturbance, early scares and disbelief, investigation and confusion, mounting danger, and an eventual confrontation that attempts to validate the believers. These beats are serviceable but rarely surprising, and the pacing sometimes feels deliberately extended to fill runtime rather than to deepen the story.
Director Rob Savage, known for his earlier work in the horror space, handles the material with professional competence. His direction is neat and controlled, and he stages several effective moments of tension and atmosphere. Yet the film rarely ventures into bold territory. Visuals, sound design, and camerawork create a moody environment, but the overall approach remains conventional, favoring established horror mechanics over originality. Where the film shines is in its quieter passages: scenes that explore grief, the awkward ways adults try to protect children, and the small, fraught interactions that make the characters feel human.
The screenplay includes dialogue and moments that feel like padding, mechanical explanations for the monster’s behavior and lines meant to justify plot turns. Still, the emotional throughline of a family coping with loss gives the movie a reason to exist beyond merely retelling a famous author’s short story. The cast’s earnestness helps sell those moments. The principal trio — Messina, Thatcher, and Blair — bring credibility to scenes that could otherwise read as hollow, and their performances are often the film’s most memorable aspects.
Ultimately, The Boogeyman is a middling, inoffensive horror film. It is neither a standout reinvention of King’s work nor a complete misfire. It follows a familiar blueprint, delivers intermittent scares, and leans on emotional beats to sustain interest. For viewers seeking a well-crafted, if conventional, supernatural thriller with strong child performances and a focus on grief, the film will satisfy. For those hoping for a radical reinterpretation or a deeply unsettling new take on King’s mythology, it will likely feel safe and forgettable.
There is commercial logic to this type of adaptation: recognizable source material, a skilled director, and marketable themes make it an easy proposition for studios. The result is a film that will attract attention because of the Stephen King name and the competent work of its cast and crew, but it probably won’t endure in the cultural imagination the way the most iconic King adaptations have. In time, like the original short story, it may fade from memory until another generation decides to revisit the Boogeyman’s scares.
Score: 9/24