The general idea of a “Boogeyman” inherently stirs up the creeps. Originating from 16th century folklore mostly designed to scare your kids, Boogeymen have taken on many forms in modern pop culture and become a proper noun for “spooky creature” in-and-of itself. Hell, one of my favorite horror quotes of all time is Tommy Doyle’s declaration in John Carpenter‘s Halloween that “you can’t kill The Boogeyman.”
Nailed it, Tommy.
The most recent direct iteration of said Boogeyman comes with Rob Savage‘s excellent adaptation of a 1973 Stephen King short story in which the titular creep is a terrifying embodiment of unspoken trauma. To be real, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen trauma as well personified as this guy.
Savage is a seasoned horror director who made a name for himself with the (also excellent) COVID Zoom feature Host. He’s a director who’s proven he has an excellent grasp on dread and knows how to pull off some of the best jump scares I’ve seen in modern horror.
Below, we were lucky enough to chat with Savage about his underrated 2023 adaptation in honor of Horror Week. Check your closet, take a quick peak under your bed, and read our interview below.
Editor’s note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity.
NFS Interviews Rob Savage
No Film School: Stephen King is one of the most prolific horror writers not only for his writing but also how frequently his work is adapted to the screen. What was it like joining the ranks of directors taking on his work?
Rob Savage: It was daunting, but I tried not to think about it too much in case it overshadowed the day to day challenges of just making the best movie possible. I felt confident moving into the shoot as King had loved the script when we sent it to him, and so it was down to me to not fuck it up.
Once we’d got a rough cut, we rented out a cinema in Maine for King to watch the film. I was in the edit room, putting the finishing touches on the movie, and there was somebody from the studio who was sitting in the back row of King’s cinema, giving me live updates of how he was reacting—he was jumping and laughing in all the right places and then followed up by sending this absolutely lovely essay about how much he loved the movie.
We all breathed a sigh of relief because his opinion was the only one we all cared about.
NFS: Did any particular challenges arise you weren’t expecting in that space?
Savage: The main challenge was making sure I was ready. I knew that I would never have an opportunity like this again, and coming off two extremely low-budget found footage movies I certainly felt the pressure.
I’d never really thought of myself as somebody who would direct found footage movies. It was just happenstance because we were all locked inside our houses for 2020, which of course led to Host, followed by Dashcam immediately afterwards. Prior to that, I had taken influence from stylists like Hitchcock and De Palma and a plethora of other visually led filmmakers, and that’s ultimately a style that I’m comfortable with.
That being said, it had been about three years since I was on a real film set, and so I was anxious about whether I’d be able to get back into a groove right away. What I forgot was that whether you’re directing a movie on Zoom or on a set surrounded by a hundred people, it’s the same process of focusing on the experience you want the audience to have and how you’re working with your collaborators to achieve that.
NFS: What are your tips for effective jump scares in horror?
Savage: When crafting the perfect jump scare the key is being in dialogue with the audience. The audience knows in these scenes that you’re about to try and scare them. And so they’re looking everywhere for how you’re going to do it, where you’re going to come from, and they know because they’ve seen a lot of these movies before. They know the rhythm of a traditional jump scare. So your job is to trick them into thinking they know what’s coming, and then blindsiding them with something that comes a beat earlier, a beat later—something offbeat and unfamiliar.
NFS: Creating a frightening monster that mostly exists off screen is tough. How did you effectively make him a force to be reckoned with?
Savage: Right from the very first pitch I knew, I wanted to hold this creature back. I want this creature to be seen in the same way that the shark is seen in Jaws or the alien is seen in Alien. These are two obvious examples, but they’re obvious because they’re the best. On the wall in the editing room we had written the amount of screen time that the monsters are in Jaws and Alien, and we were constantly timing our creature and comparing. Our movie features less creature-on-screen time than either.
When shooting, I wanted to make the creature as little seen as possible, but also feel like he’s omnipresent. I was always trying to find ways to light him to suggest his presence with shadows or glinting eyes or a kind of glimmer on the skin so that every time there was darkness in the frame, the audience felt as though it might be lurking.
NFS: How did you balance the familial trauma at the heart of The Boogeyman within the horror genre?
Savage: In Boogeyman, the theme that we were trying to discuss was the idea of the unspoken. It’s about these family members who are all dealing with the same grief, but they’re dealing with it on their own. They’re all on their own separate islands, and the loneliness in their house is the spawning ground for this creature to take up residence.
The father is a therapist, but is also unable to speak vulnerably about his own suffering, which felt central to the film. In the initial conversations with Chris Messina, we were asking ourselves “How do we invite the audience into the inner world of this character who’s so able to talk about other people’s trauma, but isn’t able to deal with his own and stare into his own darkness?”
Chris is such a soulful, subtle actor. He was the first person that we cast, and it was because I knew that he would be able to invite the audience into this character who could otherwise be a bit frustrating. He’s a character that’s closed off, disbelieving, and emotionally inert when it comes to dealing with the loss of his kids’ mother. But somehow, Chris invites you into the inner turmoil of this guy in a really beautiful, understated way and becomes the heart of the movie.
NFS: Was there anything tricky working with a child actor in a horror film (she’s great, as is the entire cast!)
Savage: Viv [Lyra Blair] is incredible. The part was originally written for a boy, but when I auditioned her I knew she was Sawyer. I’ve had a lot of experience working with young actors—it’s something I love—and so I wasn’t worried about collaborating with her, but I hadn’t realized just how special she was.
In fact, the Red Light therapy scene we shot twice—once on the first day of working with Viv and again on the final day. The reason I re-shot the scene is because on day one I had completely underestimated her ability and hadn’t pushed her far enough. After a 30 day shoot, I knew that if we had a second shot at that scene, we could push it even further.
I was right—she’s exceptional in that scene and in the movie as a whole.
NFS: Speaking of cast, what are your tips for directing actors effectively in horror?
Savage: She’s incredible. It’s probably pretty similar to Bruce in the Evil Dead movies, although she’s covered in blood a lot less, but the level of physicality and the emotional demand on her performance didn’t really hit me until we were a couple of weeks in. She’s almost in every single shot of the movie, and she’s got to do some pretty heavy lifting in terms of the dramatic scenes.
She’s got to authentically portray this character in the spiral of grief, and then in the scare scene, she’s sobbing and screaming and fighting and being bashed around. We kind of developed a second language. I was able to go up to her and communicate with a series of grunts and she’d totally get what meant.
NFS: Any other major challenges that arose in completing The Boogeyman?
Savage: Coming off scrappy low budget movies like Host and Dashcam, my way of working was a little, let’s say, “looser” than the typical studio way of doing things. On Host, we were editing as we were shooting and would often come up with an idea in the edit that would necessitate shooting a new piece of material with the cast. Both the aforementioned movies were essentially being written and re-written long into the edit.
On Boogeyman, the shoot had wrapped and the cast had been released, but I didn’t want to give up my freewheeling approach to building the edit… something that required a lot of creativity from all concerned.
My edit team and I requested most of the props and costumes from the movie be delivered into our suite and from there we set up a green screen and a Blackmagic pocket camera and would shoot our own insert shots, cutting them into our timeline as we went. Rhythm is so crucial to horror, and this allowed us to dial in every moment like a metronome.
NFS: Any advice or tips for aspiring horror directors out there?
Savage: Be bold. Every time my career has taken a big step forwards, it has been because I have taken a leap of faith and made something risky and unconventional.
My career began when I decided to make a no-budget feature film at age 17, which ended up being shortlisted for a BAFTA and launching me as someone to pay attention to in this industry. A decade later, when the entire industry was shut down due to COVID, I took another leap with Host and my life changed again.
We will beware of what you let us know what you think in the comments…
Author: Grant Vance
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
