The Boy (2016)

The Boy? Didn’t I already review this one? About the kid who lived with his dad at a motel stop in the mountains who then was all evil and stuff?

Oh, right right right, that was an indie horror movie, so very few people saw it. So it doesn’t matter that two films came out so close together with the same exact name, because the second one was in a lot of theaters and is thus now more well known. The first The Boy I heard wanted to do sequels too. That could be even more potentially confusing if those sequels become popular.

The good news is that the actual movies have virtually nothing in common.

It’s okay when they beat their kids in this film. It is just a doll!

Greta (Lauren Cohan) needs to get away from her life, so she accepts a job as a nanny in Merrie Old England. She has some stuff she wants to just get away from, and moving to another country for a few months might do the job.

When she gets to the place, she finds it to basically be a mansion and surprised that the tenants are an old couple (Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton). Like really old. So the fact that they have a kid that needs a nanny seems surprising.

Of course, more surprising is that this kid is actually a porcelain doll. But they say he is unique and have a list of strict rules despite his non-aliveness. And also they are totally leaving like, right away for a vacation. If she has more questions, they have a delivery man, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), who is around from time to time. But as long as she sticks to the rules then everything should be fine.

And you know the doll starts moving around and doing things. Also things go missing. Also Greta gets scared.

Featuring James Russell and Ben Robson as well.

Please don’t make love to the doll. I don’t care what the rules say!

I actually went into The Boy knowing nothing at all. No idea it was about a doll that might be alive. I just assumed a creepy little boy being driven by Satan, like most films about kids. But then hey, a doll. Sure. Doll films haven’t had a good track record recently. After all, did you watch Annabelle? I know you didn’t.

The Boy somehow manages to be a horror film that doesn’t want to do a lot of scary scenes. Outside of the last 20 minutes, it feels like a strange drama. We get the doll being in different places! And items getting moved around. And doors getting locked. But never when our leads are watching him, so it is just odd and never scary.

The ending does a nice job of explaining all of the events of the film, but it doesn’t mean the explanation is worth the first hour or so. It is dull and a bit boring. I am glad that it makes sense, it just isn’t an exciting explanation. It unfortunately doesn’t fully explain why everything happened in the film, which is my biggest question after watching it. Instead we get an open ending to a story that should easily have finished already.

The Boy isn’t great, it is barely a horror, and you instead should watch basically anything else.