Audience screamed so loud in Stephen King’s Boogeyman that changes had to be made
Topics: Film and TV, Stephen King, Horror
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: 20th Century Fox
Topics: Film and TV, Stephen King, Horror
There's a point in the upcoming horror movie The Boogeyman, based off a story of the same name by horror-supremo Stephen King, which was so scary the film had to be changed.
When it comes to making movies, horror can be a very tricky genre to get right, you've got to actually provoke fear in your audience for the film to land effectively, as viewers are going in expecting scary stuff to happen.
A film essentially has to wrong-foot a whole bunch of people, who are waiting for the scary bits to happen, and have probably seen enough horror movies already to get a good idea of what to expect.
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With that in mind, a movie that can leave audiences screaming so much during test screenings that the director has to go back in and change things, ought to be a pretty good sign that something has gone right.
That sounds like it was the case for The Boogeyman, as the film's director explained that his adaptation of the Stephen King story had gone down pretty darn well.
Speaking to Empire, director Rob Savage revealed there was one moment in the movie which had audiences so scared that the film had to be changed.
He said: "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.
"So we had to recut it and build in 45 seconds of padding, just so they didn’t miss any vital information."
"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."
"I was worried I’d become a horror story of compromise, but every frame of this movie is the movie I wanted to make."
The Boogeyman was supposed to release on streaming platform Hulu, but after testing well with audiences in early screenings, it's getting a cinematic release so you can see it on the big screen.
Even better, Savage revealed that he managed to impress Stephen King himself, screening the author's adaptation for the prolific writer and getting a good reaction.
King, who notoriously didn't enjoy The Shining movie of his work, apparently jumped in fear a few times while watching The Boogeyman, and sent the director an email the next day telling him he was still thinking about what he'd seen.
The author has in the past admitted that he's been scared by The Blair Witch Project and The Witch.
His work has been fertile ground for some of the most iconic films in cinema history, with horror flicks such as IT and The Shining (even if he didn't really like that one), standing proudly alongside the likes of Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
The Boogeyman releases in cinemas on 2 June.