Popcorn Frights 2024: ‘Booger’ tugs on thematic strings of death and grief

Grief as metaphor lies at the heart of Mary Dauterman’s new feature Booger. Fashioned as cat body horror, the film weaves together a patchwork of one young woman’s sorrow and guilt over losing her best friend’s cat. Dauterman dresses up the picture with raw emotional accessories. Each piece serves a purpose to drive the characters deeper into their mental prison. Horror elements emerge through the lens of death – a fear-inducing vehicle for Dauterman to get agonizingly personal. Showing at this summer’s Popcorn Frights, Booger growls and purrs as a terrifying glimpse into a bodily transformation spurred by unimaginable loss and an inability to move on.

When her best friend Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin) dies in a biking accident, Anna (Grace Glowicki) fails to move on with her life. She becomes zombie-like, shirking off all her adult responsibilities. Dangerously living in the past, Anna replays videos of her friendship with Izzy as a way to keep her friend alive. But even so, she builds a wall around her heart. Her relationship with Max (Garrick Bernard) hangs by a thread, as they both grieve in their own ways. While Anna shuts down completely, Max writes in his journal about all the little things he misses most about Izzy – much to Anna’s annoyance. She resents her boyfriend for “co-opting” her feelings, but it’s all a mask. She actually just hates her friend for dying, relinquishing her ability to process pain in a healthy way.

While sorting through her friend’s belongings, Izzy’s cat Booger sinks its teeth into Anna, leaving blood droplets and gnarly puncture wounds on her hand. Booger then darts onto the fire escape and out into the city streets. Consumed by her guilt, Anna obsesses over finding Booger. She plasters missing signs all over her neighborhood. It becomes her life. She ignores work calls, misses rent payments, and drifts further away from Max. Life crumbles into ruin, leaving Anna occupied only by her rage.

As things unravel in her life, she undergoes a physical transformation. She exhibits classic cat behaviors, from sucking on her own hair to coughing up furballs (quite literally). Many days, she wakes up in strange positions and often finds herself being distracted by birds. Anna loses her grasp on reality, and it becomes tougher to discern between the past and the present.

Dauterman exposes these nerve endings about loss, misery, and grief in a way that feels both fantastical and grounded. Cinematographer Kenny Suleimanagich gives the film a clean shimmer that counterbalances Anna’s slow deterioration – her emotions hanging like fleshy bits on the camera lens. Glowicki delivers a nuanced portrayal of a young woman’s journey into, through, and out of despair. There’s a weight she bestows upon her words that makes the film a meaty character study. Without her commitment to the work, Booger simply would exist as a flimsy metaphor with little to no actual bite. Tied together with Dauterman’s script and exploration of gag-inducing body horror (seriously, you may want to check your gag reflex at the door…), the film mostly achieves what it has set out to do: make you feel something.

Booger could have pushed more boundaries with its horror elements, often feeling tepid at best, yet there’s something truly moving about witnessing a young woman collapse and restitch her life back together. From themes of grief to its taut emotional throughline, Dauterman’s latest cinematic journey arrives as one of the festival’s best offerings. Beneath its slick, furry coat, there throbs a tremendous amount of heart – and that’s worth the price of admission alone.

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