The Boogeyman’s ending ties things up but teases a potential second chapter. Directed by Rob Savage from a screenplay by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman, The Boogeyman is adapted from Stephen King’s short novel. The horror film, which has received mostly positive reviews from critics, includes a final scene that suggests the story may not be over.
Yes, Boogeyman is still alive. Let’s dig deeper and see how it ends.
1. How does the Boogeyman end?
The Boogeyman ends with Sadie, Sawyer, and Will Harper battling the titular creature. The Boogeyman is intent on killing Sadie and Sawyer, in particular, and uses Will as bait to get Sadie to return after killing Rita, Lester Billings’ wife. After a few violent attacks, Sadie and Sawyer set fire to the terrifying creature.
Seemingly dead, the house also catches fire, but Sadie and her family can make it outside to safety. In the final scene, the family returns to therapy and openly discusses their fears of losing each other, concluding that they can finally adapt to life without their mom.
However, as they walk out, Sadie is called back in by the therapist, who isn’t there; she only sees the closet door ajar and sounds coming from inside. Rather than investigate it, she decides that’s enough for one day and closes the door. Cue the ironic use of “Burning Love” by Elvis over the end credits as the family returns to their demolished home.
2. Is the Boogeyman Dead?
The film’s ending, where the Boogeyman is still hiding in a therapist’s closet, is an intentional reference to the original short story. There, Lester Billings returns to the therapist’s office after he finds no nurse outside to make a follow-up appointment.
He sees the room is empty, but the closet door is open “just a crack,” with a voice inside repeating the phrase “so nice.” As it turns out, the therapist was the Boogeyman wearing a mask the entire time. But the sight of a closet door left ajar in a therapist’s office is as far as the similarities between the two scenes go.
The movie shows that the therapist is not a monstrous entity. Sadie immediately closes the door, symbolically refusing to let the monster come back out and into her life.
It’s a textbook ambiguous horror ending, closing the door on this story while keeping the threat alive in case a sequel gets greenlit. The monster’s apparent continued presence is the only narrative loose end that still needs to be wrapped up, and within the final scene, there are plenty of indications of how it could break loose and return to wreak havoc on the family’s lives.
3. How The Boogeyman Ending Sets Up The Boogeyman 2 Story?
The Boogeyman’s ending teases that the creature is not dead and could return to attack Sadie and Sawyer. The Boogeyman is relentless in preying on its victims, and there’s no way to determine whether the monster is permanently dead or if setting it on fire was just a temporary setback.
The creature could return, terrorizing Sadie and Sawyer until they were dead before setting its sights on another family. Battling the ancient monster again could be redundant, but The Boogeyman left off in a way that sees Sadie’s family united, which might force the creature to up its game in a sequel.
4. The Boogeyman’s Ending: Real Meaning Explained
Despite Sadie and her family getting to a much better place, with Will openly talking about the loss of his wife and The Boogeyman seemingly dying physically, the film suggests that grief will continue to be prevalent in one’s life no matter how much time passes.
Discussing it openly and allowing oneself to feel the sadness and loss of a loved one helps, but grief lingers. So regardless of Sadie defeating The Boogeyman and going to therapy with her family, the trauma remains, even if it’s no longer a physical manifestation.
5. How Does The Boogeyman Differ from Stephen King’s Short Story?
As the original story takes place entirely within Dr. Harper’s office, there are few similarities between the story and the movie beyond the one scene directly adapted from the source material. Screenwriters Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman mainly used the short story as an inciting incident to get the plot rolling.
Additionally, there is a clear difference in characterization between the Lester Billings of the source material and the movie’s Lester. He’s portrayed as a little shiftier in this newer iteration, roaming around the house and leaving it briefly ambiguous as to whether he’ll attack Sadie.
The terror in the original short story comes from not knowing whether you’re listening to the irrational account of a murderer or not; meanwhile, the very premise of this film is predicated on him telling the truth. The movie version of Lester is creepier.
However, to his credit, he doesn’t express the homophobic fears underlying his parenting tactics, nor does he display the casual racism present in King’s take on this character.
The movie also depicts Rita Billings for the first time, and her characterization is changed considerably from her husband’s dubious description in the story. There, Lester speaks of her with contempt for her parenting style that he thinks would’ve made his children grow up to be “sissies” and tells his therapist how he threatened her with violence for going against his word.
The Rita of this movie is similarly wracked by grief, but she isn’t a victim — she’s motivated by revenge, refusing to leave her four walls until she takes down the monster that claimed her children’s lives.
6. About The Boogeyman
The Boogeyman is a 2023 American supernatural horror film directed by Rob Savage from a screenplay by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman, based on the 1973 short story of the same name by Stephen King. The film stars Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, and David Dastmalchian.
It’s about a psychiatrist, where a man named Lester Billings talks to the doctor about the “murders” of his three young children, describing the events of the past several years. His first two children died mysteriously of apparently unrelated causes when left alone in their bedrooms. The only commonalities were that the children cried “Boogeyman!” before being left alone, and the closet door was ajar after discovering their corpses, even though Billings is certain the door was shut.
The Boogeyman was released in the United States on June 2, 2023, by 20th Century Studios.
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