In caring for Brahms, Greta learns about a list of rules that she must follow every day for the doll. In learning the backstory of the young man, Greta learns that Brahms apparently died on his eighth birthday and thus the doll serves as a facsimile of the child to his bereaved parents, caring for him as though he were their own flesh and blood son: fixing him meals, reading him lessons from schoolbooks, and even playing music for him at a high volume. Indeed, beyond the fact that the "boy" is nothing more than a porcelain doll, it seems rather ordinary.
...or does it? As the Heelshires leave to go on vacation, some seriously weird shit begins happening and Greta begins to believe that the doll is, in fact, possessed by the spirit of Brahms as he has not moved on from this world. Indeed, she feels an obligation - due to having lost a child herself before it could be brought to term - to care for Brahms. This is right under the list of bad ideas right up there with "Oh, Mr. Killer! Let me run into your knife for you!!!" Mind you, it's far more character development than we saw in Stay Alive, so perhaps I should just give it a pass and move on. Cohan is very good in the film, though I would say it's beneath her talents.
Really, for a horror film there isn't a lot here to horrify. I'd be tempted to say there's nothing at all except for the occasional jump scare that is to horror what fart jokes are to comedy. That being said, one of the only two is actually very well placed, so I should probably just applaud them for that. Sadly, I can't for much else. The drawing out of quiet moments for the sake of "building suspense" are almost Biblical in length. There really is a difference between building suspense and just wasting everyone's time. Coming in at just over an hour and a half, this film is padded out like crazy with many such scenes that go nowhere.
And yes, there are some shots with the doll that look creepy, but the film holds onto them for way too long. For the first ten seconds it's somewhat disquieting, but after that you're just wasting time.
The pacing, too, is completely off its nut. It's really like watching an episode of Sliders. At one point, Greta's doing something and then is speaking to the family's grocer Malcolm (Rupert Evans) in the next scene, and it casually gets mentioned that she's been in the house a week. When? And why did things of the creepy vibe not start happening beforehand?
And, again as I said before, I was able to discern the plot's twist ending based on the first ten minutes. Without wishing to spoil it...I won't say that it's ripping off Friday the 13th Part 2, but The Boy would be very quickly seen doing its best to mirror its footsteps as closely as possible if you see what I mean. It really just feels like something that could have used a few more rewrites. The acting is actually pretty good, particularly from Cohan who has several moments where she shines. But it's just not enough to save the movie.
Its riddled with plot holes and clichés to no end, and the moments that don't have them are just very, very slow - lots and lots of build up with minimal to no payoff. The feeling is like its trying to go for a classic horror feel but without actually having anything scary to actually bring to the table, as well as doing a paint by numbers version of several different subgenres of horror, but without doing anything that makes those genres good. Indeed, even the jump scares seem like an afterthought just to help keep the audience awake more than to actually startle them.
Ultimately, not very scary, moderately creepy. It has a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason, folks!
The Boy is now in theaters from Lakeshore Entertainment, Vertigo Entertainment, and STX Entertainment.
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