Stephen King's Boogeyman too scary for audiences, director says

I’ll be totally honest with you, reader, I am very much not a horror movie person. The idea of hiding behind a cushion and then feeling my soul leave my body thanks to a jump scare just isn’t my idea of fun.

It’s for that very reason that I’m pretty much certain that I’ll never watch The Boogeyman. The upcoming horror film is based on Stephen King’s 1973 short story titled - you guessed it - The Boogeyman. In a recent interview with Empire, director Rob Savage revealed that when the movie was first shown to an audience, it was so terrifying that the crew decided to dial things back a bit in the final cut.

Take a look at the trailer for The Boogeyman below.

“The first time you see the creature, the audience screamed so loud, and then immediately started talking with their neighbours and chattering, that they completely missed the next lines,” Savage explained. “So we had to recut it and build in 45 seconds of padding, just so they didn’t miss any vital information.”

He continued: “I’m a huge jump-scare guy. That’s the most gratifying part, when you see that play with an audience and you can feel them taking the bait, and then you feel the jump land.”

However, even though some alterations have been made since that first screening, Savage is very satisfied with the final product: “I was worried it’d become a horror story of compromise, but every frame of this movie is the movie I wanted to make,” he said.

If you weren’t already convinced about how good it’s going to be, Stephen King himself has seen the film, and he’s apparently been very positive about it. Savage told Empire: “We rented out his cinema and screened the movie for him in Maine. I didn’t go because I was terrified that he was going to do a Shining on it and absolutely hate it. But apparently he jumped on numerous occasions, and then sent this lovely, lovely message to everyone who worked on the movie. And the next morning I get an email saying, ‘From Stephen King’. And he says, ‘Robert, I’m still thinking about your movie the next morning.’”

The Boogeyman is set to release in cinemas on 2 June.