Review – ‘Bogeyman: A Real Fear’ Expands Stephen King’s Creepy Story to Personalize Family Grief

Review – ‘Bogeyman: A Real Fear’ Expands Stephen King’s Creepy Story to Personalize Family Grief

Rob Savage’s film uses the short story as inspiration to follow its own path, and the result is quite competent.

When Prometheus stole fire from the gods in order to give it to mankind, he was terribly punished for Zeus. Even with good intentions, the titan faced disastrous consequences for endowing people with light and warmth, but it was the shame of Prometheus that marked the beginning of a new era for mere mortals: with the fire of fear of what lives in darkness, there will be no more. be more of a problem. But what if even in this case personification of fear hiding in the shadows, just waiting for the flames to go out before attacking?

It is from this question Boogeyman: your fear is real gets the month of June in theaters. Taking as a starting point the short story of the same name by Stephen King, the director Rob Savage returned after separation video recorder (2021) to bring all the creepy atmosphere of the original to the big screen. And more than just an adaptation of the universe created by King, the writers Scott BeckBrian Woods This Mark Heyman took a writer’s idea to expand it, creating new nuances and filling in gaps with Savage’s meticulous guidance.

Data sheet

header: Boogeyman – Your fear is real

DirectionStory by: Rob Savage

Road mapStory by: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods and Mark Heyman

release date: June 1, 2023

Country of origin: United States of America and Canada

Duration: 1h 38min

SynopsisSynopsis: Sadie Harper, a high school student, and her younger sister, Sawyer, mourn the recent death of their mother without much-needed support from their father, Will, a therapist who also struggles with his grief. When a suffering patient unexpectedly shows up at his home seeking help, he leaves behind a terrifying supernatural entity that haunts families and feeds on the suffering of its victims.

Poster “Bogeyman: your fear is real.”

Who’s Afraid of the Boogeyman?

Try to remember a time when you were a child and were about to begin your sleep ritual. Your parents probably interrupted the super exciting game to put you to bed before 8pm, which means your mind was too busy for that. However, the bedroom lights went out and suddenly her worst nightmares came to life, especially this one. the monster that hid under your bed.

Of course, at that time it was just your mind trying to deceive you. What if all those creatures that scared us in childhood – cookiesYou boggarts and so on – weren’t they just a product of our imagination? It is this question Boogeyman: Your real fear trying to answer in terms of Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher), a teenager who is trying to cope with mother’s deathas well as a younger sister, sawyer (Vivienne Lyra Blair), without much support from his father.

If the pain of mourning isn’t enough, two sisters witness strange events at home after their father’s psychiatrist patient shows up looking for help, just to leave supernatural being in residence. Because of this, the simple act of turning off the lights can be extremely deadly.

Boogeyman: The Fear Is Real is inspired by a Stephen King short story.

For as long as the world has existed, saying that monsters are hiding under the bed or in the closet has been one of the tricks most adults use to get kids to obey. It is a universal experience that has already been reproduced several times in cinema, literature, or any other form of art, and Bicho-Papao always appears as the most recurring figure in these “stories”. After all, there is nothing better than using your personification of fear cause surprise.

Stephen King knows this all too well. The writer is not known as “master of terror“No way, after all. Whether in novels like Carrie or in stories like this boogeyman (boogeyman, loosely translated), King manages to create an intoxicating adrenaline rush that, cinematically speaking, makes the heart race in the hands of a director who knows what he’s doing. This is a story adaptation boogeymanwhich arrived in Brazil with the subtitle Your fear is real.

As already stated, the purpose of Rob Savage’s film is not to adapt Stephen King’s story line by line. While in a story of several pages we follow a disturbing story that Lester Billings do to doctor harpist about the murder of his three children, a feature film starring Sophie Thatcher (yellow vests) shows the journey of the two daughters of a psychiatrist in the story, who do everything to cope with the loss of their mother, without receiving much help from their father, will (Chris Messina). It was an interesting creative decision for expand King’s storywhich puts the intriguing aspects and details of the narrative into a different perspective.

The film tells about the journey of two girls along with their father, trying to cope with the death of their mother.

However, faced with this reality Boogeyman: your fear is real push the dramas of the Harper family to the center of the debate, it’s the teenage Sadie who gains the most prominence in the storytelling. The fears and insecurities of a young woman who has just lost her mother figure are embodied in the figure of a monster hidden in the closet, a piece of furniture that, while retaining her mother’s favorite dress, also hides the horror that mercilessly consumes her.

And wouldn’t that be a great way to try and define what it means to experience grief, making it “tangible” so that, who knows, finally understand what it is? The Harper’s journey, especially Sadie’s journey, can be seen from this angle, after all, the monster under the bed may not be in sight at first, but neglecting it won’t change the fact that it’s there patiently waiting for the lights to go out to come out.

It’s when a crack in a door opens or a candle light dims that what Sadie thought was only in her head, or that it was just her little sister’s fertile imagination, eventually turns into a suffocating reality and a terrible one. where not even light can interfere.

don’t let him out

There is a line in Stephen King’s story that can be easily summed up. Boogeyman: your fear is real. This is Lester Billings, who is played by an actor in the Rob Savage film. David Dastmalchyan (Suicide Squad), the sentence is talking about something that at first exists only in your head, but which, if you passionately believe in it, can become true. “Maybe if you think about it long enough and believe in it, it becomes real.” (loosely translated), Billings says Dr. Harper. Looking at it from that perspective, the title the movie got here in Brazil couldn’t be more accurate than it is.

And that’s what makes the atmosphere boogeyman even more interesting, because at certain points there is nothing scarier than what lives in your head. The fear that what lurks in the shadows of our thoughts—trauma, pain, and bad feelings—becomes real enough to break out of the world of ideals and haunt us in the flesh is paralyzing in a way that even an Animal cannot. being, no matter how grotesque its appearance.

The film plays with the idea of ​​monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet to develop the Stephen King tale.

Director Rob Savage not only captured this moment, he managed to capture it intelligently through the camera’s eye, as he has done in his short films such as Mind-blowing Dawn of the Deaf (2016). It is clear that Savage’s experience with horror made him boogeyman turned into a compelling visual journey as the film finds angles so unique that in the hands of someone unfamiliar with the genre, they are unlikely to be well executed. This is a reality that only people like James Wan know like the back of their hand, and Rob Savage appears to be on a very promising path to achieving it.

So, Boogeyman: your fear is real uses a popular figure like Bicho-Papao to talk about grief family who hides more and more in the darkness of his own feelings. Even though they share the same trauma, each member of the Harpers deals with loss in their own way, and it adds new nuance to Stephen King’s story regarding the experience of having to learn to live with the irreparable absence of a loved one.

After all, there is no way to survive death, and the heroine Sophie Thatcher tries to deal with this fact precisely in that phase of life, which in itself is already so disturbing and full of changes at every moment. The actress manages to sincerely convey the essence of Sadie, which further emphasizes her role in the plot.

Sophie Thatcher is the highlight of Boogeyman: Your Fear Is Real.

Perhaps it’s Sadie’s twist that ends up “erasing” a bit the frustrations experienced by Will Harper, who needs to face the delicate situation he finds himself in. Without a wife, the psychiatrist struggles to rebuild and support his daughters, but the film doesn’t explore this so much as it explores Sadie’s experiences and her relationship with her younger sister Sawyer. It’s choices, of course, and it’s not something that greatly hinders the execution of the narrative, but still there is a feeling that we could see a little more of this development.

However, in the end, Boogeyman: your fear is real an excellent horror film that uses elements inherent in the genre such as the famous scares, for example, sparingly, very well transitioning between more dramatic layers and terrifying sequences to weave together a story in which a simple act of fear can end your life in an instant. In the end you just have to believe enough for fear comes true.

Rating: 4/5

Boogeyman: your fear is real premiere on this day June 1, 2023 in Brazilian cinemas.

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