The Boy

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, i...

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

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

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.

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 gon...