The Boy 2016

Let’s face facts…it is inevitable that bad horror films and the new beginning of a movie season go together as systematically as skeleton bones to an unmarked grave. In either case, both scenarios are routinely realized and does not look to change at any time in the immediate future. Director William Brent Bell’s (‘The Devil Inside’) latest banal boofest ‘The Boy’ is basically business as usual in terms of registering as a flaccid fright fable pitted in the dumping ground of released duds in the relatively new year. In essence, ‘The Boy’ is one stillborn terrorizing tyke born out of artificial and tired creepy conventions.

Sure, The Boy has its share of atmospheric chills and, as a production, it exudes a tension-filled anxiousness courtesy of the polished Gothic-induced vibes in gives off in its sinister-looking set designs. Nevertheless, The Boy fails to hold our attention where it truly counts in structured, solid storytelling and viable psychological thrills. Instead, Bell’s pat knee-shaking narrative spends its time focusing on the familiar and flawed cliches involving meager melodramatic plot developments, recycled unnatural occurrences, the movie’s harried heroine and her beleaguered backstory and annoying jolts and tiresome false jump starts in manufactured suspense. Of course, ‘The Boy’s panic playground for its horrific happenings takes place in a spacious and darkened manor populated by eccentric occupants and their devoted, demonic doll (hence, ‘the boy’ in question).

American Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan, ‘The Walking Dead’) travels across the pond to start over in the quaint English countryside as she leaves behind the fragments of a bad relationship back the States. Greta looks to pursue a job opportunity as a nanny for the Heelshire couple (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle) at their expansive estate. The Heelshires need Greta for tending to their son Brahms’s personal affairs. The unusual discovery from the newly hired nanny, however, is that Greta’s task is to watch Brahms, a porcelain doll and NOT a human little boy. The Heelshires, out of touch with reality, treats the inanimate tot as a real son. Nevertheless, a job is a job so Greta minds the toy tyke when his ‘parents’ decide to go away for the holiday.

Thankfully, Greta learns about the histrionics pertaining to the Heelshires and Brahms through their deliveryman Malcolm (Rupert Evans). The Heelshires’ disillusionment originated nearly two decades ago when the original and real-life Brahms died in a tragic fire. This, of course, reveals the questionable quirks about the boy’s maturing parents’ behavior and denial mode in substituting the doll conveniently for their belated and beloved son Brahms. Greta is determined to do right by the Heelshires and treat Brahms with the compassion they imaged her duties would entail. Importantly, Greta must make a good impression on the unassuming boy doll as the Heelshires warned that Brahms has had his troubles with past nannies.

At first Greta is pensive to react to Brahms and leaves him sitting idle in the corner. The Heelshires had given specific instructions on how to handle their precious “boy” as they have naturally spoiled him with amounts of attention. Greta eventually finds the nerve to cater to Brahms’s every caretaking whims and soon expresses a fondness for him in the process. So far, so good, right?

The Boy certainly has its moments of shock value but the sluggish story feels lukewarm for the most part. Bell and screenwriter Stacey Manear cobble together a mysterious and moody horror thriller that is somewhat old-fashioned as it relies on tension-building tactics involving shadowy hallways, dim-light rooms and innuendo scares that suggest more meat to the bone when spotlighting everything from Brahms’s aura of the present to the deceased Brahms’s existence of the past. Both Bell and Manear arm The Boy’s leading lady Cohan/Greta with personal issues meant to carry over to the English landscape but the malaise she possesses comes off as matter-of-factly. And who really did not telegraph Greta’s ex-main squeeze Cole showing up in England to claim his woman’s heart only to meet some static concerning the clingy Brahms?

It is such a shame that The Boy could not capitalize any further on its strange and hypnotic inclinations. After all, this off-kilter narrative had the makings for a psychological masking of paranoia and possessiveness but never quite taps into the underscored hedonistic hold that exists between Greta and toyish tot Brahms or Brahms and the salacious spells of the manor where his dubious presence exists. Sadly, the slow burn effectiveness of The Boy stutters especially when revisiting the titillating genre of disturbing dolls and the mayhem they spin towards their hapless human counterparts (yeah, at least Chucky and Magic’s dummy Fats had some genuine gory gumption to bring to the terrifying table).

What is maddening about The Boy is the wasted potential of what perhaps could have been a whacked-out gem that exploited the surreal circumstances of mental and emotional loss and elusive reality. Instead, the intended suspense is as solitary and stiff as the bratty Brahms’s compact body.

The Boy (2016)

1 hr. 37 mins.

Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Diana Hardcastle, James Russell, Jim Norton

Directed by: William Brent Bell

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Critic’s rating: ** stars (out of 4 stars)

(c) Frank Ochieng 2016

— Frank Ochieng

When a nanny meets a boy who is a weird toy.

So this is the other 'The Boy'. The last year film was a thriller-drama, but this is a horror-mystery. It feels like watching a classic horror film, especially because of the English atmosphere and the house where it was shot. A young American woman named Greta, takes up a nanny job in England to escape from the troubled relationship with her boyfriend. She discovers the boy she has to look out is a doll and later she observes a series of strange events that leads her to find out the truth. The dark secret comes out and that's the film.

A limited cast film. The suspense was the key to the story narrating successfully. So I expected a big twist at the end, but it was a decent one and the overall film was just above average. The atmosphere was creepy, and then it weakened as the development was decelerated going to the second and the final act. Until the twist, it was good and after that a bit disappointing. Not because of the bad conclusion, but comparing it with the rest, especially after the anticipation it created in us, that end part looked so small and simple. Good film to watch for once, but like the most of the horror films, it's fallen short to get my thumbs up.

6/10

— Reno

One of the best horror movies I've watched in the last decade. Watch my full review here.

http://www.hweird1reviews.com/allreviews//the-boy-review

— Austin Singleton

Takes the tired old "Living Doll" premise and does okay with it by adding in a couple little spritzes of originality and a cast up to task. These two factors, as well as a pretty compelling third act almost salvage a good movie from this worn-out, boring premise.

Almost.

Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.

— Gimly

I thought to myself, finally someone out there is making a movie on something which is an incredibly common phobia, this is going to be AMAZING! How wrong was I. After watching this movie I asked my partner what would she do in the females position of having to look after the porcelain Momma’s boy, she replied “shave him and put lipstick on him” - I found this response better than watching the entire movie. I don’t recall one part of this film which I sat an thoroughly enjoyed. So if he had been shaved and made up, maybe then I would have had that slight bit of entertainment.

So we start off and the obviously attractive babysitter girl rocks up at obviously isolated house and an obviously good looking guy is there to greet here, what a fucking groundbreaking start! She walks into the strangers house even though they haven’t even came down to greet her which in my opinion is just damned bad manners so I’m already sat hoping potfingers fucks her up a bit for being so stereotypical.

The couple she’s working for come downstairs and lo and behold as if the title didn’t give it away, it’s not a child……….it’s a fucking doll. I have to say as well the creepy doll bears resemblance to an 8 year old peadophile. She gets a set of rules which you can see her already disregarding inside her head as she’s taught how to put a doll in PJs and tuck it up for the night, at this point I would have been ordering Dominos and a truck tonne of movies on the sly for the easy time ahead. There’s an attic. As if this movie couldn’t be anymore fucking original - we now have a mysterious attic where the audience is supposed to wonder what happens beyond the ladder! I did not, I wondered when is this going to end as I can feel my mind thinking about going back to the Indian takeaway I’ve left downstairs for morning. I mean she ends up going to explore the attic NAKED, as if I couldn’t be more frustrated at how unoriginal this is, like a lot of other current horrors it has quickly gone down the road to try and make you focus on the potential tits rather than how fucking bored you are by the plot. I’d wrote a decent amount of things to comment on for after the film but truth be told - all I can say to truly summarise it would be Hollywood horror. The jumps are cheap, the twists are obvious and Brahms (child) just turns into more of a pervert as the movie progresses. If the girl was feeling that fucked up by what was happening surely you’d just get a heavy object and smash his porcelain face in? Well, being quicker about doing this anyways. (OOPS spoiler alert, but if you hadn’t seen that coming then I’m going to guess you’re someone who watched this and thought it was pure golden).

If you ask me, all Brahms wanted was a bit of action judging by him acting like a randy teenager during the movie, even encased in a pot shell there was no stopping the lad from trying to scope her in the shower. Gotta give it to him for that I guess.

Terrible. Avoid. Stay clear. 2/10

— skyezero