There’s probably plenty of filmmaking lessons to be learned from Jaws. But in the new Stephen King movie, The Boogeyman, there was one particular technique that was deemed necessary for making the most of its scares.
The monster movie, directed by Rob Savage is an adaptation of the Stephen King short story of the same name. It follows — you guessed it — The Boogeyman as it haunts a family reeling from loss.
When The Digital Fix spoke to Savage about the new movie, he let us in on a special secret he had to making the most of his monster. (And it has something to do with two of the best movies of all time.)
“When we were doing the edit, we had the screen time of the creature on the wall,” he explained. “Then we had the amount of time that the shark is in Jaws, and the alien is in Alien. We wanted to make sure it was in line with that.”
According to him, he actually managed to beat the precedent set by both Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott.
“Actually, there’s like a second less of this creature than there is of the shark in Jaws and a second and a half less than the alien in Aliens,” Savage confirmed. “We really don’t show it very much, because we wanted the audience to be able to, still project their own fears onto it.”
For those interested, the shark in Jaws (AKA: Bruce, to those in the know), has approximately four minutes screen time after appearing one hour and twenty-one minutes into the movie. Same can be said for the Alien in Scott’s science fiction movie nightmare.
Of course, famously, the lack of shark in Jaws was due to various production errors, but it wound up making the sharp-toothed fiend one of the best movie villains of all time. And now, we can see that effect rippled into horror movies today, with filmmakers like Savage trying to take a page out of the classic movies’ book.
We’ve got everything you could want to know about The Boogeyman, including how to watch the new Stephen King movie, as well as The Boogeyman ending explained, and The Boogeyman monster explained.
Plus, you can check out our interview with star Chris Messina, or, for other scares, check out our lists of the best ghost movies and zombie movies of all time.