Ferocious feline felony body-horror flick Booger marks the revenge of childless cat ladies

The cat is outta the bag on this year’s most slept-on indie horror flick. I’d apologize for the terrible pun, but I’m fairly certain its right in line with what the filmmakers set out to achieve here.

Booger follows Anna (Grace Glowicki) from NYC, whose best friend and roommate Izzy unexpectedly shakes off this mortal coil. Anna’s attempts to regain her footing are disrupted by the disappearance of Izzy’s cat, Booger. Flinging herself into a desperate search for the runaway feline, our lead sees her remaining relationships start to spiral downward. When Booger turns up and bites Anna, a transformation starts to gestate inside the grieving New Yorker. Is our heroine confusing her place in a disintegrating reality, or is she actually beginning to morph into a being more kitten than human?

It can be both, I assure you.

As debut feature for writer-director Mary Dauterman, Booger has everything you could want from a complex meditation on grief and loss—alongside all the things you really, really don’t want from a body horror nightmare. Dauterman weaves several genres together in an intimate microcosm of refracted pain, cycling from twisting a blade to juggling a knife set.

In what should be a star-making showing from Grace Glowicki, Booger soars thanks to an acting tour-de-force that tap dances between psychosis, animalistic hedonism, caustic curiosity, and bemused floating above existence itself. It’s easily one of the best ‘unhinged weirdo with reckless abandon’ roles in recent years—pulling equally from Possession, Suspiria, and The Shaggy Dog.

The breakthrough chemistry here relies on how the performance and the story zigzag, often diverging and allowing the audience to make their own choice as to which tone to adopt. There isn’t a frame of Booger that can’t be viewed as trauma seeping through the cracks of sanity. The exact same scenes can be appreciated for how hilariously Glowicki dedicates herself to going full method on hacking up an unexpected furball in a bar bathroom. When the same scene oscillates between all the emotional extremes without needing to force a shift—that’s how Booger proves itself as something above and beyond; worth your immediate time and attention.

Booger is out now on VOD on all platforms, so you’ve got no excuses to skip this one.

From our early screening, we knew that this flick was something singular and destined to make ‘Best of ’24’ lists come December, so we hopped on a call with Booger‘s director and star to prod at how this all came together.

The Pitch: Which is more difficult to work with: children, animals, or an adult woman that you’ve told to act like a cat? 

Mary Dauterman: I’ve worked with a lot of animals so I’ve seen the entire spectrum of issues there. The easiest animal I’ve worked with in film was a donkey and the hardest is easily cats. Our son—our cat—Bobby was one of the two cats we used in filming, and both cats were difficult in different ways. Let’s just say that a lot of those yogurt treats were passed around on set.

Grace, did you study Bobby in particular since he was acting opposite you and was the inspiration for the titular character? Or were you doing a deep dive into the psychology of cats, in general, to prepare for the role of a woman slowly morphing into a were-cat? 

Grace Glowicki: I had a couple of friends send me videos of their cats in the beginning because I’ve always been more of a dog person. My approach to the world is more dog-like: “Do you love me? Let’s hang out! Give me some rubs!” Also… I’m allergic to cats. So being asked to act like a cat was, indeed, starting from scratch. I came to understand that cats have a psychology of being, like, bitches—they’re thinking ‘fuck you’ and lashing out. Everything is on their terms, everything is defensive. Their physicality is more psychology. I let myself be loose with that, and got into how cats move their shoulders as they’re sizing up a situation. The most relatable moment for other actors is probably the freak-out I had three days before we started filming. I panicked. “What if I don’t understand what cats are??” Most films, in the day or two before, I freak out a bit and worry that everything I’ve prepared is entirely wrong.

Dauterman: Grace would send me pictures of herself and ask, “Is this how a cat sleeps?” I’d say yes, that’s how a cat would sleep.

Grace, how were you approached with the pitch for this from Mary?

Glowicki: I don’t remember the specifics. I got an email in my inbox that said “Offer: Booger” and I was sold, on title alone. I really like working with body fluids; I’m obsessed with it. The humor of puke and poo and pee and snot and boogers—I adore it. So from the title alone, I was in. A girl fluids movie? Even better. Then I learned about Mary and she’s just so ‘the genre’ here—but also chill and supportive of my bolder instincts. It was a dream opportunity.

Dauterman: The only concern I had when I met Grace was hearing how she pronounced the name of the film. [Ed. note: Glowski’s Canadian accent makes this word “bew-gur” instead of “buug-er.” It is… really funny throughout the interview.] 

Mary, what’s your path from your short film Wakey Wakey to this first feature? 

Dauterman: It’s funny. I just showed the film last night at a screening and I saw a lot of what put me on the path toward Booger. I wanted people to be uncomfortable, and I wanted the lead to make irrational choices based more on feelings than reality. Watching the short now, I see those threads of what I was exploring. Wakey Wakey was shot in my apartment; Booger is largely shot there as well. I was making these narratives on the side because I was creatively frustrated working in advertising—which I think is common. So these semi-jokey projects were bouncing around until 2020, when everything stopped. I decided to sit down and write my first feature, for real, and figure out how to make it.

What does the finished film look like, versus where you started?

Dauterman: It started off as more of a straight comedy, but it bent hard into depression and isolation. I felt like I’d written these pages for no one, until there was a combination of my writer’s group and my eventual producer got on board.

When you make something like Booger that’s so wacky but equally based in grief and loss—do you feel like you accomplished what you wanted to do personally, with what you wanted to tackle? Did making Booger… help?

Dauterman: There are certainly questions here about what’s mentally healthy to do. But then I’d get emotional on set and think that was proof it was working. When we got the shot I’d be thrilled it was captured, and it would feel like I’d pulled something off. A bit like an evil puppet master of a feeling. There were so many moments where I just watched Grace throw herself around and when I knew we had it on film, we had to move on to doing the next ridiculous round.

I wanted to ask you about that because—incredible Possession vibes throughout here. How much of these intense sequences were fun to throw yourself into versus how exhausting were they? What’s that ratio?

Glowicki: It’s hard to do a film where you’re dissociating the whole time, but if it’s with the right creative partners, it’s such a joy and privilege. It’s exhausting but if you trust your director, that makes it so rewarding. A lot of scenes I would just start from a place of just trying to make Mary laugh. If you can get a giggle—if you can make the person who wrote the script and is directing you in the thing they conceptualized—and you can make them laugh with surprise at what you’re doing… it’s like a drug? A mutual drug. There were so many times on set when I’d shoot Mary this pointed glare between shots or a pleading while they were shoving props or hairballs into my mouth—I’d just be like, “Mary, why are you making me do this? Mary? No!” I was just razzing her but it was a lot of fun.

Booger is out now on VOD on all platforms,

Since this interview, a bonus bit of Booger joy has dropped.

For the film, a particular karaoke track makes repeated appearances in different tones and different hypnotic forms. It’s the classic “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” who writer signed off on letting the filmmakers use the track at a tiny fraction of what almost any other licensed film song would cost. Thanks to the gift of the rights, and the several amazing versions of the song used in the film, the door was opened for an album of various artists (and a cast member) covering the drunken good-time classic. “Pina Colada” comes in 24 new flavors, via this Spotify playlist.