The Boy
Year: 2016
Directed By: William Brent Bell
Written By: Stacey Menear Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert
Evans, Jim Norton, James Russell and Diana Hardcastle
Tagline: “An American nanny is shocked that her new English
family’s boy is actually a life-sized doll. After she violates a list of strict
rules, disturbing events make her believe that the doll is really alive.”
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 27%
IMDb Rating: 6.0/10
Well. That was underwhelming. Not
that I really expected that much from the movie anyway, but damn. You’d think a
premise where a creepy doll in an old British house playing tricks on Maggie
from The Walking Dead would have some redeemable moments. The most redeemable
part was when Greta (Lauren Cohan) was wearing a pyjama shirt with no bra on
underneath. All general perviness aside though, the doll, Brahms, was not
creepy, in fact he was polished and shiny all the fucking time and always wore
a suit and never did anything crazy. Like at all. He never even did anything to
create a fever pitch which forced Greta to follow the rules. Like, he fucking
served her dinner and she was like, oh, I better listen to the rules! What?
Huh? Slappy from the 2015 rendition of Goosebumps voiced by Jack Black was
scarier.
I imagine that the creators of
this saw what a success The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2 and both Annabelle
movies were and went, “Hmm. We should do a doll movie. And we should cast
Maggie from The Walking Dead, people still like that show, right?” Sorry, sirs
and madam’s, wrong on both accounts. It was a sloppy delve into Greta’s
backstory, doesn’t even really explain how she got in touch and out to Britain
in the first place to baby-sit a doll to escape her murderous-rage-filled
boyfriend. Somehow wanted to throw in that plot point so Lauren could actually
show acting chops in it maybe? Also, plot twist, turns out Brahms is human and
alive! Got a Freddy Krueger thing going on, but he’s there. No idea how the
fuck he ran around the entire fucking house that easily during the rest of the
film and for a guy who lives in dust and walls and skinny as an AIDS patient,
he’s got a Jason strength going on when he kills the boyfriend and knocks the
other British fucker right out. How? No explanation? Alllllrighty then.
It’s also never explained why
Brahms stopped mentally aging past an eight-year-old and why his parents were
fine with the fact that he was like straight up living in the walls instead of,
you know, in the living room and shit. Like one day after the house fire Brahms
is like, “Mom, Dad, I’m going to live in the walls and you will take care of
this doll that has my spirit in it, okay? I also want a doll face mask to
match.” And they were like, “Cheerio old lad, not a bugga.” (I assume that’s
how they would talk). Then apparently they got really fucking depressed about
it twenty-some-years later and instead of evicting or even attempting to talk
to their real, actual son instead of the doll (or charging rent?), they each
put one rock in their pockets and walked into a fucking lake. First off, that’s
absolutely a half-assed way to do that. One rock? That ain’t going to keep your
bloated body down, champ. That’s an easy climb back out of the lake while the
Misses sinks to the bottom so Mister Brahms can go enjoy the nearest brothel
until his heart gives out. But also, you definitely finished paying the
mortgage on that house. You’re going to let crazy, manipulative, creep,
attic-dwelling Brahm take that house? Scott free? I don’t think so. To their
credit though, nice pick on Lauren Cohan as the ‘sacrifice’. It was a good
final attempt. If anything’s going to snap Brahm out of his pre-pubescent,
eight-year-old in a twenty-eight-year-old’s body, it’s the fucking smoke-show
that is Lauren Cohan. Like, who wouldn’t just snap out of it? “Brahms, I know
you’re only an eight-year-old boy, wink wink, but here’s a smoking-hot,
thirty-five year old, American, woman who just got out of a relationship and is
definitely single that we’re going to leave you all alone with, okay? Oh and
rule number ten is always give you a kiss goodnight, we just wrote that in for
you, so go ahead and enjoy!” But wait, also, how would Brahms really be able to
read the death letter his parents sent and get the context? Like I bet there
was some upper-class British talk going on in there and he probably stopped his
English homework twenty years ago. No way he got all that. I’m just writing
myself into hating this movie more and more now. Imagine Brahm’s B.O. No way
they had the bids and the bees talk so he’s definitely just reeking to high
heaven up in that stuffy attic. But also, how was there a fridge and microwave
and shit up there? Brahm didn’t age past eight, but he’s rigging control boxes
and electrical equipment? Fucking hell.
To put this all into perspective,
it didn’t even have a general consensus on Rotten Tomatoes. So nobody saw this
film. Actually, I take that back. This fucking thing made over thirty-five
million domestic and over sixty-four million worldwide. On a ten-million dollar
budget. Boy was I wrong. Looks like we’re going to have The Boy 2: Brahms Hits
Puberty. The plot is he can’t stop jerking his pud to Greta and searches for
her in America. The twist is, it’s thirty years later and Greta went through
the “change of life” and Brahms is no longer interested, so he goes back to
just fucking the dress over a bale of hay from the first one. It’s a
full-circle feature film of sorts.
General Shenanigans Written By: Steve “Sandwich” Hanisch 