Exclusive interview: Mary Dauterman on ‘Booger’

Grief doesn’t follow a straight line. It seeps. It lingers. It mutates. And in Booger, Mary Dauterman’s gloriously grotesque feature debut, grief bites—literally. What starts with a cat scratch soon spirals into a surreal body horror journey through post-traumatic disarray, loaded with slippery limbs, smeared eyeliner, and oozing emotions. In her words, somewhere between ‘Frances Ha and The Fly’, this unforgettable film doesn’t just get under your skin, it claws right through it.

Premiering in the Underground section of the Fantasia Film Festival and finding a home with genre fans around the globe, Booger is a uniquely sharp, sticky little movie. Part cringey comedy, part psychological meltdown, and part high-concept creature feature, it’s the kind of film that provokes both laughs and dry heaves in the same breath. It’s also a story about love – gritty, messy, platonic love – and the identity-cracking crisis of losing someone who once anchored your world.

For Dauterman, a writer-director whose background includes Vimeo Staff Picks, Adult Swim projects, and subversive children’s books for adults, Booger represents a twisted culmination of years spent navigating discomfort and finding humour in horror. While her short films (Wakey Wakey, Unfinished Business) were already unafraid to prod the awkward and uncanny, her debut feature goes full-throttle with hair-rooms, lo-fi nightmares, and quietly devastating character work. Beneath the goo lies a story about reconnection—both with others and with one’s own self.

We sat down with Dauterman to talk about her love of gross-out cinema, the grief that inspired the film’s slimy centre, and how Booger slinks between horror and hilarity with something tender still pulsing at its heart.

Exclusive interview: Mary Dauterman

Love Horror: If you approached someone in a cinema foyer that was considering watching Booger, how would you sell it to them?

Mary Dauterman: Think Frances Ha meets The Fly.

You’ve described Booger as a “disgusting comedy about grief” – why did you feel that bodily transformation and dark humour were the right vehicles to explore grief, rather than, say, a more traditional drama?

Grief is unmooring – it makes us feel disconnected from reality and linear time. Exploring grief through the lens of the surreal and the strange felt right to me. The shock of the disgusting and strange naturally translated to evoking that gut-punch emotion – I knew it would elicit a response (even if that response was “ewwwww!”).

Anna’s transformation in the film is triggered by something as small and domestic as a cat bite. How important was it to you that the surreal and grotesque elements were rooted in something deeply everyday?

I wanted the transformation to have some logic behind it. Everything is connected: the grief of losing Izzy, the paranoia of losing Booger, the physical hurt.

Your previous short films often play with discomfort and the uncanny in unexpected spaces. Were there any specific images or sensations you absolutely wanted Booger to deliver that you’d been carrying in your head for a long time?

I love wet slimy goofy uncomfortable things and it’s funny how it’s (semi-accidentally?) become a thread in my work. In general I like making audiences uncomfortable – whether that’s through semi-painful cringe comedy, highlighting what’s so awkward and painful about being a human, or just straight up disgust, because I find it such a rich world to play in.

The hair room in Booger was an evolution of some of the experimenting I’d been doing with boundaryless nightmare spaces. The idea of the hair and the dirt came from some conversations with my production designer Pili Weeber, and some inspiration we were finding from gallery installations.

There’s a line between humour and horror where an audience might either laugh or squirm – how did you balance those tones when writing and directing, and were you ever surprised by how people reacted?

Both humor and horror have tension and release so their rhythms naturally made sense to me in the film. It wasn’t a tricky balance per say, but there were times I wanted to give the audience moments of relief by pulling the comedy back in. I know it’s a film with a unique tone – and people who are on my wavelength generally react how I hope they will. But it’s not for everyone!

You’ve said this is ultimately a story about the joys of friendship and the pain of loss. Were there personal experiences or relationships that helped shape how you approached Anna and Izzy’s bond on screen?

Absolutely – I feel like my female friendships are some of the most wonderful and entwined and codependent and messy and important relationships I have. I really wanted to capture that intensity, and highlight the significance of these friendships.

The body horror genre has such a vivid history, from Cronenberg to newer,  reinterpretations like The Substance. Where do you see Booger fitting into (or breaking away from) that tradition?

I love not only the ridiculousness and disgust but also the craft of body horror – the tactile nature of the effects and the sheer surprise and inventiveness. I’d be delighted if Booger was/became part of the conversation. I think of Booger (and generally my film work) as genre-mashing more than outright body horror, because I’m borrowing from the genre emotionally and aesthetically but it’s not my total focus. In Booger, the body horror is more internal, private, secretive, but that’s in line with the themes of the film and what I wanted to explore.

Your background spans everything from directing Adult Swim projects to publishing offbeat children’s books for adults. How do these different creative outlets feed back into your filmmaking voice, especially on a project like Booger?

I think all of my work has been slowly building towards my discovery of wanting to be a filmmaker. It’s honestly been a gradual, zig-zaggy, and unplanned process to get here. I just like making things, and working with my friends, and making ridiculous ideas come to life. And eventually those ideas started to take narrative shape. And now I want to make more!

Finally, Booger has already received strong festival attention and critical buzz – but what’s the one reaction or takeaway you most hope audiences walk away with after seeing it?

I hope it makes you call your best friend!

Booger is out now to buy and stream. To find out where you can catch it, visit: www.arrowfilms.com/

Booger trailer

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