Stephen King's Boogeyman had to be recut after audiences screamed too much

The Boogeyman film 2023 — (Image credit: Stephen King The Boogeyman)

A movie adaption of Stephen King's 1973 horror story The Boogeyman is headed for the big screen in June.

However according to its director, Rob Savage (the man behind 2020's Host), when the film went through the process of test screenings, audiences screamed so much that he decided it needed to be recut.

The Boogeyman follows the story of high school student Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher) and her sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), who are in mourning after their mother's recent death. Meanwhile, after a desperate patient shows up unexpectedly at their house asking for help from their therapist father, they soon become haunted by a terrifying monster.

In a new interview with Empire, Savage reveals that the test audiences became scared after first seeing the aforementioned creature, so much so that the volume of their screams stopped them from hearing important moments in the film.

“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,” he explains. “So we had to recut it and build in 45 seconds of padding, just so they didn’t miss any vital information.”

Savage adds: “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.'”

Speaking of how the movie contains plenty of jump-scares, he says: "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."

The Boogeyman will arrive in cinemas on June 2. Watch the trailer below:

Liz manages Louder's social media channels and works on keeping the sites up to date with the latest news from the world of rock and metal. Prior to joining Louder as a full time staff writer, she completed a Diploma with the National Council for the Training of Journalists and received a First Class Honours Degree in Popular Music Journalism. She enjoys writing about anything from neo-glam rock to stoner, doom and progressive metal, and loves celebrating women in music.