A Slept-On Stephen King Adaptation That Was Re-Edited Because It Was Too Scary Just Arrived on Hulu

April 6, 2026, 5:30pm

Stephen King knows how to deliver scares in his stories, but only a few adaptations of his works have been so terrifying that they’ve had to be edited after production because they were too scary for viewers. That was the case for a recent King adaptation that made audiences scream so loudly that the horror movie was scared into an edit, and it’s now streaming on Hulu.

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That movie is The Boogeyman, Robert Savage’s adaptation of King’s 1973 short story of the same name. The supernatural horror movie centers around a grieving therapist and his two daughters haunted by a supernatural entity. After a desperate patient leaves behind a shadow creature that feeds on their trauma, they must confront their loss and battle the monster lurking in their home. The movie hit theaters in 2023 after one aspect of the film was so terrifying for test audiences that it ultimately had to be re-edited before its theatrical release. It started streaming on Hulu on April 5th.

The Boogeyman’s Monster Was Too Terrifying for Test Audiences

When it comes to a creature feature, the most important thing to get right is the creature itself, and The Boogeyman simply did it a bit too well. The movie takes a less-is-more approach to showing its monster, hiding it in shadows and only ever showing its humanoid silhouette in brief, terrifying glimpses. When the creature is finally revealed, elongated, spider-like limbs and fang-like jaw and all, it’s pure terror. Audience screams during test screenings were so intense and long they drowned out crucial dialogue, prompting Savage to “recut it and build in 45 seconds of padding, just so they didn’t miss any vital information,” he told Empire.

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More than just its effective monster design, which includes the ability to mimic human voices in a flawed, chilling way, The Boogeyman is a back-to-basics monster movie that focuses on primal fears of the dark and creatures in the closet and excels at building a sense of dread and delivering solid jump scares. The movie scored a 60% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, putting it at No. 24 on the site’s ranking of King adaptations, and it even earned the author’s seal of approval. Savage revealed that after King saw the movie, the author sent him an email saying, “’Robert, I’m still thinking about your movie the next morning.’”

What’s New on Hulu?

The Boogeyman started streaming on Hulu on April 5th following a massive wave of arrivals earlier in the month that included 50 First Dates, The Beekeeper, The Day After Tomorrow, Monster House, the Night At The Museum movies, Pizza Movie, and Primitive War. Throughout the rest of the month, the streamer is scheduled to add titles like Bad Boys Ride or Die on April 7th, the complete The Hunger Games franchise on April 14th, and Good Boy on April 25th.