Strange things go bump in the night as a result of a tiny but creepy presence in underground horror director William Brant Bell’s feature “The Boy”. Greta (Lauren Cohen) is a young American woman who takes a job as a nanny in a remote English village to make things easier on her increasing finances, only to discover that the family’s 8-year-old son is a life-sized doll named Brahms that the parents care for just like a real boy, as a way to cope with the death of their actual son 20 years prior. This leads a questionable Greta to figure out what is truly going on here, as the doll is every bit of his wooden personality. After violating a list of strict rules, a series of disturbing and inexplicable events bring Greta’s worst nightmare to life, leading her to believe that the doll is actually alive. She soon learns the troubling history of the family’s past thanks to a local delivery guy (Rupert Evans) well versed in the Brahms violent past. The two race against their own clocks to stay alive and put the pieces together.
It’s only January, and we’ve already experienced two different horror themed films early on. But if you think this is your typical horror film, you will be quite disappointed. “The Boy” leans heavily on its psychological tempo by offering very little blood or gore. In fact, nothing happens at all for the most part in this movie. I am not overexaggerating in the slightest, “The Boy” is one of the most boring movies that I have seen in a long time. Literally nothing happened in the real world until the final twenty minutes of the movie. I say “Real world” because the film has some dream sequences that are used to keep the audience at bay during the entertainment droughts that this film has going for it. One positive is that the film only has four jump scares as opposed to the several that we have come to expect in James Wan films. But the movie is very dry because you wait and wait and wait some more for some kind of content to come along. The film’s direction is quite manipulative in supporting what the story is trying to accomplish because it has holes as big as Arkansas in them. Like any film for the genre, there is a plot twist in the final twenty minutes of the film, and while I didn’t predict everything perfectly, I did manage to get the biggest point of all correct. Anyone would. If you watched this film and didn’t pick up on the direction that this plot is taking, you didn’t pay attention. I can’t spoil too much, but I will say that the film’s reliance upon creepy setting only takes it so far.
The setting itself is one of the only positives that I had for this film. The real life English castle is the perfect setting for such a dark and grim tale, and the use of light and shadows makes for many tricks and treats for the audience to engage in while the characters themselves are giving us literally nothing of merit on-screen. Evans character is fine enough, but Cohen’s Greta is unlikable in the freedoms she takes for herself. This film wouldn’t even be necessary at all if this woman would just follow the rules laid out for her in the first act. Instead, she mocks and belittles a family’s house rules because she deems them as foolish. The movie does do an interesting twist in making you feel for the character of Brahms, so much so that the main protagonists are often viewed in disrespectful lights. Whether the film is in the right for taking this kind of direction or not is a question for another time, but it’s funny especially when you consider that the story doesn’t hide how truly evil this little child was in his human form. Just like 2014’s “Annabelle” we are once again treated to several hundred camera shots of the doll with nothing of substance to satisfy the creepy stares of something everyone is afraid of. Brahms doesn’t move a single time in any frame in this movie, and quickly the audience is able to catch on to the pure stupidity of Greta’s worries and concerns.
The final answer for the mystery is predictable as I mentioned, but made even more foolish when you really stop and think about what happened in the movie. One of my favorite things in a mystery is to go back over everything and dissect how things were possible with the final outcome. After doing this for “The Boy”, I can truly take that this movie is full of shit. There are so many situational holes in the scene set-ups that there is no possible way these kind of feats could’ve been pulled off with the way the movie ended. As for the ending itself, I honestly wasn’t that impressed. It quickly turns into a slasher flick, which is a step up from the previous 78 minutes, but nothing of bragworthy note was presented to make this film stick out. It’s 91 minutes of egg in your face and fire in your wallets for the waste of time you just sat through.
Overall, “The Boy” (Like its central character) is wooden, lifeless, and blankly unterrifying. It’s an hour and a half of purely quiet boredom that never pays off. Watching Brahms is like watching a security camera in a store that has been closed for years. Even more disheartening is its identity crisis, as this film is anything but a horror film. It’s a lie to its audience, to its characters, and to its story alike.
Advice – Rent “Child’s Play”. Yes it gets a bad rep for being silly, but wouldn’t you rather watch a movie where the doll actually does something?
3/10