I believe that "underwhelming" is the most suitable word to describe William Brent Bell's "The Boy" (2016), a horror movie too afraid to accept its own B-movie traits until the very end, although by then it is already much too late. Starring Lauren Cohan (of "Walking Dead" fame), "The Boy" essentially takes a tired concept (that emotionless porcelain dolls make for memorable movie monsters) and runs with it up until there is nowhere left to turn. By the time the credits were rolling, my brain had long since checked out of the theater.
The film begins with little to no exposition, instead opting to thrust our young heroine, Greta Evans (Cohan), head-on into a dated English manor where she is to take residency as the entrusted nanny of Brahms, the beloved eight year old son of Mister and Misses Heelshire (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle), while the latter two go to take a much needed "holiday" away from the country side. There is just one catch - the Brahms that Cohan's character is supposed to be watching is in fact an old, seemingly lifeless porcelain doll with perplexingly boyish features. That does not stop the Heelshire's from treating it as their own sacred son, however - they talk to it, kiss it goodnight, scold it when it does wrong, and even lay out a list of ground rules for Greta to follow while they are gone, including such tasks as reading it poetry every day and making sure that it stays well fed. Yet as soon as the Heelshire's leave the house to only Greta and the doll, and as soon as Greta begins neglecting the rules meticulously laid out before her, things begin to run amok. The usual shenanigans for movies in this genre begin to unfold - things move when they should not, doors slam shut on their own, articles of clothing go missing - and as you may suspect, it starts to feel as if there is a whole lot more going on with that damn doll than the Heelshire's are letting on. Greta is visited at least once a week by the Heelshire's grocery-man, and suitable love interest, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), a family friend who does not mind spilling the beans on the odd nature of her employment - that the real Brahms tragically died in a house fire nearly twenty years ago, and that ever since the doll turned up, the family has treated it like so. Greta opens up about her past as well, which includes a story about traveling from her home in America to the UK in order to escape an abusive relationship, a story that the films leans on heavily for its final act, but one that I feel is never fully or satisfactorily explained. Why did she decide to move from Montana to the UK, of all places? Why not simply a few states over, or to a neighboring country like Canada? Certainly there are other nannying jobs she could have taken, and just how did she come across the job for this hush-hush country hall, anyhow? The movie does not really seem to know, either.
Outside of these events, as a matter of pure filmmaking, it seems highly...well, lazy to leave a film's atmosphere up to that of an inanimate doll. We know that it is a doll, we know that it looks creepy, it does us no good to simply drop a close-up shot of its face every time a household item moves around. One might think that the elaborate mansion the film takes place in would serve to provide ample tension with its long dark corridors and obligatory lack of wi-fi, but even then the film still undercuts itself too soon. We walk with our protagonist through Heelshire Manor's doors within five minutes of the movie's opening, and it simply feels like an old house, nothing more. It lacks the suspense and foreboding of the titular location in Guillermo del Toro's "Crimson Peak" (2015), a film that is wise to save its haunted mansion for the second half of its story, and is just one of many that nails down a certain consistency that constantly eludes "The Boy." This is proven to be true during the movie's final revelations. A fateful twist of the plot takes place, and the pace of the film almost completely shifts in the most abrupt manner possible, before it is quickly, dare I say, 'childishly,' resolved.
"The Boy" ends up hastily stumbling through its own motions in a manner that makes it hard to take seriously, and perhaps even worse, it leaves us unsure of whether or not we were supposed to in the first place. I did not hate the movie, but I cannot give it a quality seal of approval. The cast tries with what they have got, but this film, much like Brent Bell's previous "The Devil Inside" (2012) will undoubtedly end up lost in the data banks of the IMDB.
And what do ya know? They were both released in January. Veto!
- Jared Mullis
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