Stephen King has never hidden his contempt for movie adaptations of his books that he felt failed to live up to the source material. His reasons range from thinking they are exploitative and crude (as he did with Ralph S. Singleton’s Graveyard Shift), to feeling they ignore the original novel’s themes (Paul Michael Glaser’s The Running Man).
The most famous example of King hating an adaptation comes from his dislike of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Stephen’s condemnation was especially shocking, given how quickly the iconic 1980s horror film became a hit after its debut. Even more surprising is King’s affection for a more recent, controversial adaptation of one of his many short stories: Rob Savage’s 2023 supernatural horror-thriller, The Boogeyman, which is now streaming on Netflix.
From the outset, the original story and Savage’s adaptation differ in many ways. The 1973 short story (later included in King’s 1978 collection, Night Shift) follows a man named Lester Billings. After the deaths of his three children, Billings goes to see Dr. Harper, a psychiatrist. It’s a contained story set over a single night and is very dialogue-heavy, with Billings telling the tale.
To sum up Billings’ predicament: his children kept dying under mysterious circumstances, most of which were deemed natural by doctors and police. However, the one thing the children had in common was that they cried out “boogeyman!” before perishing. The closet door was also always ajar when their dead bodies were found. Pretty spooky.
Savage’s take feels more like a sequel than a faithful adaptation. Instead of following Billings, it uses that story to set up another one focused on Dr. Will Harper (Chris Messina) and his daughters, Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), as they cope with the death of their mother/wife.
After Billings visits Dr. Harper’s office to explain that an evil entity known as the Boogeyman killed his three children, he is eventually killed by the Boogeyman hiding in Sadie’s mother’s closet. However, his death is made to look like a suicide, so nobody in the house suspects foul play. Soon afterward, a sinister creature begins terrorizing the house, and Sadie suspects it’s connected to Billings’s death.
It isn’t just the plot that has changed; Savage gives both the setting and the Boogeyman a new coat of paint, too. This adaptation is set in the present day, and the Boogeyman is skeletal, with spindly limbs and eyes that glow in the dark. (The original takes place in the 1970s, and the Boogeyman’s description leans more humanoid, with the ability to wear other people’s faces.)
Despite differing so wildly from his original story, Savage’s adaptation was so well-loved by King that, as Savage told GamesRadar, King wrote the production team an “almost-essay” about how much he enjoyed the movie. The next day, Savage woke up to an email from King telling him he was still thinking about the film.
“The nicest thing that he said was, ‘They’d be fucking stupid to release this on streaming and not in cinemas,’” Savage told GamesRadar.
The Boogeyman grossed $82 million worldwide during its theatrical run, soaring over its $35 million budget. It didn’t do quite so well with critics, with a 60% score on the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, and 65% from audiences on the Popcornmeter. All in all, it’s not the worst Stephen King adaptation in the world — and certainly not one he hated — but it hardly comes close to the masterpiece that is The Shining.
Why does Stephen King love The Boogeyman?
Given how much King hates some adaptations of his work and how wildly different Savage’s is, some may feel that King’s approval of The Boogeyman doesn’t make much sense.
However, Savage’s The Boogeyman has more to it than meets the eye. For one thing, it’s not exactly easy to adapt a short story that is essentially a conversation between two people into a film. The details Billings gives in the book are pretty sparse, too, making it a rich playground for Savage to work with by moving it to a modern setting.
The adaptation also captures the original’s core sentiment: an evil creature is destroying families. Savage takes it a step further by making the Boogeyman more clearly an allegory of grief and trauma, but it isn’t too far from what King sets up in his short story. With all that in mind, it’s no real surprise that the horror novelist is a little more lenient with this adaptation than others.
The Boogeyman (2023) is available to stream for free on Netflix.