At Monstrous Industry, the Gutter’s own Carol Borden has some thoughts about Mary Dauterman’s Booger: “Grief has long been a good subject for horror. And it’s been a prominent vein in horror in the last decade or so. Some of the best films where grief is central are ones by or about women– The Descent (2005), The Babadook (Australia, 2014), Goodnight Mommy (Germany, 2014), Hereditary (USA, 2018), Midsommar (USA, 2019), and Nocebo (Philippines/Ireland, 2022), to name a few more recent films. Grief is protean, changeable as we change with it. Even when grief does not involve anger or vengefulness, it is often ugly–self-involved, not nice or appropriate, not concerned with making other people comfortable or not inconveniencing them, too much. The women in the above films become apparently monstrous in their losses, but, as always, it’s complicated. In writer/director Mary Dauterman’s Booger–“disgusting comedy about grief,” as Dauterman calls it–a woman flirts with monstrousness in a more literal sense, but she has certainly turned inward and pushes other people who need her, want to grieve with her or want to help her away as she searches for her dead best friend’s cat.”

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