Directed By William Brent Bell
Starring – Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman, Christopher Convery
The Plot – Unaware of the terrifying history of Heelshire Mansion, a young family moves into a guest house on the estate where their young son (Convery) soon makes an unsettling new friend, an eerily life-like doll he calls Brahms.
Rated PG-13 for terror, violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.
POSITIVES
– Reputable cast. If you can attain credible performances in a throwaway contemporary horror film, it makes the sit all the more easier because of such. As is the case here, as the combination of Holmes and Convery give a lot of raw energy and psychological weight to the duration of the film, thanks in part to an untimely event that takes place during the film’s opening moments. Seeing Holmes back in the spotlight gives us a glimpse of an actress who should’ve been a huge star after the 90’s and early 2000’s established her as a name for the future, but here she simply doesn’t waste the opportunity, emoting her character with a fragility that is almost entirely missing from the rest of the picture surrounding her. Convery is one of the better child actors that I have seen for horror in quite sometime, cashing in a role that is more dependent upon facial and physical acting, as a result of the character being shocked silenced by a near tragic event from his past. He embodies a soul who you feel equally empathetic and unnerved by, almost preserving two roles for the price of one, based on the effect that Brahms has while under his control.
– Brief run time. 81 minutes is shocking even for an underwritten sequel to a movie that shouldn’t have had one, but it at least solidifies that the film’s screenplay never tries to make this anything that it rightfully was not, and a few benefits come from this. The first is a lack of slow spots during the storytelling, which keeps you invested to the mayhem even if the story beats strike an air of inescapable familiarity within them. The second requires a first act start that doesn’t waste time getting its feet wet, all the while conjuring up an air of empathetic sympathy for the protagonists that most sequels don’t bother with when it comes to new characters. If a movie isn’t going to impress me cohesively, I at least can credit it for making the experience one that requires as little investment as possible, and it keeps “The Boy 2” from falling by the wayside of previous 2020 horror dumps like “The Turning”, “The Grudge”, or “Fantasy Island”.
– Production improvements. There are many to gloss over here, as the success of the previous installment certainly has blessed this chapter with no shortage of obvious enhancements for viewing pleasure. The set designs are detailed with a feeling of outdated trends and styles that gives the mansion a very lived in feel, and the cold, claustrophobic sense that exists within Karl Lindenlaub visual capacity are ones that create an eerie sense of atmospheric tension the natural way. The experimentation with the lighting schemes is also something that I appreciated, if even just for this film breaking conventions towards carving out a visual identity for itself. The use of neon nightlight’s and alarm clocks illuminated the scenes in a way that mirrored the unnerving tension, even if their lighting volume felt a bit too vibrant for the product they came from.
– Doll involvement. Without question, my biggest problem from the original film was its lack of doll movements within the sequences, which made for some truly boring telegraphed scares. This lack of influence makes sense once you know the movie’s twist, but did nothing in justifying boring cinema. For this film, it does reward audiences who can’t take their eyes off of Brahms, bringing forth movements so subtly deposited that you often wonder if you’re seeing the same things that Holmes’ character sounds off that she is thinking she sees. It’s not fully satisfying to feel believable for the magnitude of objects being thrown and destroyed from around the doll, but it does show in addition to its telling that the doll is a living thing, and one whose biggest force isn’t just in the violent demeanor that he exerts on those who break his rules.
NEGATIVES
– Torturous tropes. This film simply can’t resist the combination of fake-out dream sequences and cheap jump scares that I have started to actually take count of in cheesy horror movies. Fortunately from “The Turning’s” abundance of dream sequences, that made the actual movie feel so limited in its scares, “The Boy 2” at least only has two of them. A feat I could forgive if not for the 29 jump scares that fill the entirety of this picture. There comes a point when establishing atmosphere is sacrificed for the easy volume increase that teenagers will pay top dollar for, and elaborates at the bigger problem within horror being that those in charge don’t truly understand the definition of the one word genre description that so many like myself grew up appreciating. The volume capacities are ridiculously spiked without a single one of them feeling justified, and is on the rinse cycle when it comes to how it recreates each derivative sequence.
– Contradicting sequel. If I liked anything from the first movie in this series, it was the shocking sequel that brought reasoning to everything taking place around Lauren Cohen’s character. But when I watch “The Boy 2”, it’s like these filmmakers didn’t see that previous movie, and create lunacy in a plot hole that is as big as anything that I have seen in recent memory. What I’m going to say isn’t spoilers because it’s all featured candidly in the trailers. In the first movie, Brahms is established as a living, breathing adult who has been living in the walls of the house. In this sequel, Brahms is a possessed doll who in turn possesses people around him to do his evil deeds. Does anyone see a problem here? Brahms was not only proven alive at the end of the first movie, but also residing in the very same house that this second film takes place in. WHERE DID HE GO?
– Distracting at times. This is seen through realization scenes, which use a fish-eye lens to sell the panic in a character (Mostly Holmes) figuring out a surprise that happened underneath their nose. I usually appreciate any stylized efforts from a production willing to experiment, but these temporary instances not only felt jarringly obtuse from the rest of the shot composition surrounding it, but they also couldn’t keep its consistency long enough to make it feel like a continuous trait from inside of the film. In fact, this lens is only shown twice, giving its illustration within the production an almost comedic effect that throws back to 70’s cinema, complete with rush-cam close-ups to convey a character emotion. Conventionalism was definitely the way to go here, and could’ve led to an approach that didn’t need to sell style as a gimmick to immerse us into.
– Backstory revealed. If you’re a Brahms enthusiast looking to learn more about the character, this film has you covered. Through a heavily-expositional sequence involving newspaper articles and recordings, we find out what I can assume is everything that there is to know about the character. The problem for me is two-fold. First, it contributes to the film’s contradicting presence with the first film that I previously mentioned, carving out a series of factual events that don’t accurately play into what we’ve learned about the man behind the doll. Secondly, it removes the mystique about the antagonist in favor of a series of events that prove what we already were anticipating about the character, in that he’s certainly nothing special when compared to other possessed doll films within the genre. For my money, I love when films leave their killers ambiguous, as I feel mystery or lack of explanation plays into their scare factor. Without it, you might as well be writing a Nintendo Power Magazine article on the doll, complete with strategies and even compromising fan-fiction.
– Mishandled subplots. There’s plenty here that I can bring up, but I will limit my critique towards two glaring examples that the movie constantly alludes to, yet offers no semblance of substance conjured from its script importance. A continuous interaction with a laptop-only seen psychiatrist constantly repeats the same dialogue that has already been mumbled a hundred times by the third time she has popped up in between jump scares. This character is never seen in person, nor does she add anything to the film other than to say the family’s little boy is messed up mentally, because the movie has no faith in its audience interpretive capabilities. The other one has to do with a pivotal first act event that I previously mentioned, that apparently holds no weight to Katie Holmes psyche, despite taking the brunt of the physicality for what took place. With tighter direction, this element of the script could’ve been used towards Holmes questioning herself in regards to if she’s really seeing what she thinks she’s seeing, or if it’s her frazzled psyche playing an influence into everything. If you can answer why Convery’s character is made silent in the first place, I’ll quit my complaints towards this particular section. Nothing he writes on a pad is ever a contained secret that gives away what his vocal capacities otherwise wouldn’t, and it manufactures an unnecessary convenience that becomes annoying with time.
– Doll design. This doll still doesn’t do it for me, with regards to the scare factor of its competition. You look at Chucky, or Annabelle, and you see two examples of obvious devilish design that goes a long way in telling their story long before their actions do. For Brahms, there’s nothing remotely intimidating or weathered about his design that makes him noticeably stand-out, which in turn creates an even bigger problem for the character’s visual continuity throughout two films. In the first movie, the doll is smashed to pieces of the tiniest form, and you’re telling me that there’s a glue in this world that not only molds all of the tiniest pieces together, but also doesn’t harvest a single crack in the doll’s facial appearance? Plastic surgeons everywhere should be worried about losing their jobs in the near future to this impeccable glue that makes miracles.
My Grade: 4/10 or D-