The Boogeyman director Rob Savage has high praise for Sophie Thatcher’s performance in the upcoming Stephen King adaptation. Speaking to SFX magazine, Savage compared the star to another acclaimed horror performance.
"She’s fantastic in every single thing that she does, but people aren’t ready for the level of her performance here," the director says in the upcoming issue, which features Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on the cover. "She’s in almost every single frame and she’s operating on a Toni Collette in Hereditary level. It’s an incredible, commanding performance, and the whole film really rests on her shoulders."
Thatcher plays high school student Sadie Harper who is struggling with the recent death of her mother. When her little sister Sawyer (played by Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Vivien Lyra Blair) starts seeing a terrifying creature lurking in the house, all of their nightmares begin to come true. Yellowjackets fans will know Thatcher best as the young version of Natalie in the psychological thriller, and she’s also had roles in The Book of Boba Fett and Prospect.
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Colette’s performance in Ari Aster’s Hereditary is often hailed as one of the best horror performances of all time. She plays an artist in the disturbing movie who’s dealing with the death of her mother as strange things start happening around her and her family.
The comparisons don’t stop there either, as Savage also compares The Boogeyman to several other movies too. "When I first pitched this movie," he explains, "I said 'It’s going to be Poltergeist meets [1980’s] Ordinary People'. I wanted it to be scary and fun and playful in its horror, but also have a real weight and meatiness to the drama. Our family is grieving a loss when we meet them; I wanted that to not feel flippant and easy.
"Once we started making the movie, I was looking at haunted house movies, even though it’s ultimately a creepy creature feature. The Changeling and [1961’s] The Innocents, which is my favorite movie of all time, and Robert Wise’s The Haunting – the way that they use implication, light and shadow, composition and sound, to have your mind sketch in the blanks and leave you feeling like you’ve seen more than you actually have."
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The Boogeyman releases in cinemas on June 2. That's just a snippet of our interview, available in the latest issue of SFX Magazine, which features Strange New Worlds season 2 on the cover and is available on newsstands from Wednesday, May 17. For even more from SFX, sign up to the newsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.
