Movie review: The Boy

BY MADI TORTORA

Staff Writer

“The Boy,” directed by William Brent Bell, takes the classic scary movie involving an eerie, seemingly innocent doll and takes it to the next level.

Bell is known for several scary movies, including “The Devil Inside” and “Wer.” Although there were no recognizable actors in The Boy, but their performances were nowhere near disappointing.

The movie begins by introducing the main character Greta played by Lauren Cohan. She is young and looking to make some money, so she takes a job as a nanny for an unusual family in a remote English village. Upon arrival, she is introduced to Brahms, the young boy she has been put in charge of nannying — only he’s not exactly what she expected.

Brahms is a doll – cherished and loved by his parents as if he was an actual eight-year-old boy. After violating a list of strict rules set in place to ensure that Brahms stays sane, Greta learns, with the help of Malcolm, the grocery boy played by Rupert Evans, that the job she signed up for is actually her worst nightmare.

In the beginning, this movie seemed to be the cliché horror movie, consisting of themes similar to “Annabelle” or “Child’s Play.” Brahms didn’t look extremely menacing, his face made entirely of porcelain with a content look on his face. Eventually, he started acting up, moving things around and making things disappear. Frightening wasn’t a word I would’ve used to describe this movie in the beginning, but as the movie progressed, it became more and more menacing.

Without spoiling the ending, I can add this: it was unexpected, and completely worth the wait. The movie began kind of slow, but by the end, it was hard to sit still in my seat. This movie exceeded my expectations, and as a self-professed horror movie buff, it managed to actually provide the sense of being “scary.”

As expected with a scary movie, the focus wasn’t necessarily on cinematography and acting. The main goal of a horror movie is to provide a scare to its audiences, and these types of movies usually use sound effects and suspenseful camera angles to achieve this. “The Boy” stuck to that goal, as expected. The sound effects were extremely loud, to add that extra ‘umph’ to the already suspenseful scenes.

“The Boy” eventually proved its worth with its terrifying plot twist, suspenseful camera angles and sound effects.

Rating: A

Genre: Horror

Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes

Rating: PG-13

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