The Boy review

“The Boy” is a near-bashful horror programmer that doesn’t overstay its welcome or reach too far outside the bounds of its base-line conceptual ambition. If you’ve seen more than 12 scary movies in your life it’s nearly impossible to be surprised or frightened by this effort, but it fits nicely into the type of PG-13 horror training-wheels that’s designed for pre-pubescent slumber parties and casual Netflix and chill invites and.

Lauren Cohen plays Greta, an American 20-something on the run from an abusive relationship, who finds herself in England looking for temporary work. Soon after, an elderly couple known as Heelshires hire Greta to watch their son Brahms while they leave their gothic stone-mansion for a long-needed vacation. Here’s the kicker; their actual son was killed in a fire 25 year before the events of this story and they have since been responding to a three-foot porcelain doll as if it were a sentient being. Because she needs the money or because being paid to watch a lifeless doll seems too easy to pass up, or possibly because of the hunky grocery boy Malcolm (Rupert Evans) who makes daily delivery visits, Greta decides to ignore the fact that she’s living a horror-movie cliché and takes the job. After a few days alone with a very specific list of ‘babysitting’ rules to follow she hears strange noises, things are moved involuntarily and yada yada yada, weird things happen.

Lauren Cohen, known primarily for role on television’s “The Walking Dead,” pretty much to carries this entire picture by herself. The production is sparse with very few locations, and the boilerplate nature of the story has the plot set on a light simmer for the majority of the run-time. Unlike the foul-mouthed sport killings performed from the charismatic Chucky character from the “Childs Play” movies, Brahms is a subtly creepy doll and because the movie wants us to question the protagonists sanity—a lofty narrative goal that isn’t fully explored—there is relatively little that actually happens from scene to scene. With that said, Cohen commendably keeps the non-events of film activated through her natural charisma and a wry charm bubbling just underneath the surface of her underwritten role. Her chemistry with Rupert Evans is believable and in brief moments you almost wish they were in a different movie with a better screenplay. 

The set design is just as stock as the plot and the even lighting of every shot renders the film quite televisual in its bland presentation. There’s some mild jump-scares sprinkled throughout and they are spaced accordingly with the film’s pacing but they’re also the only real source of tension derived from this self-serious B-movie. Towards the last third more reveals are made and the plot then decides to trade one well-worn genre trope for another and by this point director William Brent Bell, stylistically, has already have shown his entire hand.

As somber and patient as “The Boy” wants to present itself as being, the inherent camp of this tired story is inescapable, especially as every character behaves as if there were no horror movies within their world. With that said, this wasn’t a chore to watch and it asks very little of the audience. It’s undeniable that this movie is traditional to fault and much of it is certainly eye-roll inducing, but in a cheap, Goosebumps-y kind of way, it’s acceptable as disposable RedBox schlock.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2016

Listen to more discussion about "The Boy" on this week's Jabber and the Drone Podcast.