The Boogeyman: Stephen King's one of the most terrifying stories doesn't get a proper adaptation

Stephen King is a prolific horror writer popularly known for his mastery of horror and suspense. Among his extensive collection of terrifying tales, one standout short story that has gripped readers is The Boogeyman. 

Published as a part of the 1973 short-story collection Night Shift, the story taps into the readers' primal and childhood fears. On June 2, the story was adapted into a full-fledged film directed by Rob Savage. Was it the best Stephen King story adaptation?

The bad thing about adapting short stories is that they don't have much plot to make a full-feature film, as happened with King's last short-story adaptation, Mr. Harrigan's Phone. Thus, the directors have to elongate the plot with additional characters and their stories. 

In the source material, the whole story revolves around Lester Billings, a father who loses all three children to a mysterious entity called 'Boogeyman'. In this film, Lester Billings is still a victim, but he makes way for the entity to enter Will Harper's family and makes the plot long enough by making the family victims of the entity. 

Inside the Harper family, they are still mourning the death of the Harper matriarch, who died in an accident. The apparent suicide of Lester in their house becomes an additional trauma, so they seek the help of a psychologist. 

Things start to worsen when Will and his children, Sadie and Sawyer, realise that the Boogeyman has targeted them and started unleashing havoc inside their house.

Sadie and Sawyer are the key targets of the Boogeyman, which primarily targets children. They and Will try to learn about this malevolent creature and its ties to Lester to defeat it. Will they save themselves? Stephen King adaptations rarely have a happy ending, and probably this one won't either.

The major weakness of this film is that, in its attempt to make the plot longer, it steered away from the source material. The horror elements are good; there is a sense of dread looming throughout the film, but erasing Lester from the film too soon makes the story confusing. 

Was Lester trying to warn Will? Or was he just acting as the pawn of Boogeyman? The audience will never know.

Another noticeable aspect of the film is modernising the plot. Technology has advanced a lot since 1973, so director Savage modernised the plot quite a bit, but not enough. 

Light is the major weakness of the Boogeyman, but Sadie and Sawyer forget throughout the film to use it as an advantage, even with their phone's flashlight. Perhaps the absence of this common sense is meant to be plot armour for the villain.

It might be a far better adaptation if The Boogeyman were adapted into a short film or an episode of a series. The weakness in the plot causes the film to lose the essence of Stephen King's story, where it makes the common childhood fear into a terrifying creature, evokes vulnerability, and creates an atmosphere of unrelenting terror. 

Instead, they are replaced with 90 minutes of claustrophobic suspense and many jump scares. Will King fans take it lightly? We might have to observe.

[email protected]