Review of THE BOY: Porcelain Poltergeist

February 23, 2016

There was a little horror movie with no big stars that debuted in local theaters last January 27. I did not have the opportunity to watch it back then, and did not think much about missing it. However, three weeks later, "The Boy" is still showing in theaters while the higher profile movie it opened with had already been pulled out. Since it was the only film starting when I got to the mall, I chose to watch it and see what was behind its staying power during a time when a most small films usually only had a single week to prove itself.

A young American woman Greta accepts a job as a nanny for a well-to-do elderly British couple, the Heelshires. However, she was surprised to discover that the boy Brahms whom she had been hired to nanny for was actually a porcelain doll. He was curiously being treated like a real child, even with a list of rules Greta had to follow.  One day, Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire go away for a long trip, leaving Greta and Brahms alone in the old mansion.  From then on, Greta's amusement with her "easy" job slowly turned into fear as strange, creepy things begin happening to her, seemingly caused by the inanimate Brahms.

The success of this movie really fell on the shoulders of its lead actress Lauren Cohan. As Greta, she had to emote mostly by herself as supernatural events were happening around her. Of course, she will do all the typical things horror movie heroines get to do -- like taking a languid shower, going to check up on a noise in the attic, go outdoors in the dark, etc... However, she generally did not come across as annoying, as most others do. Cohan had enough class not to appear stupid when Greta started to take Brahms' rules seriously. I guess Ms. Cohan had a lot of practice dealing with monsters as Maggie on the hit TV series "The Walking Dead."

The rest of the supporting cast basically play one-dimensional characters around Greta. Rupert Evans played Malcolm, the guy who delivered groceries to the mansion who inevitably falls in love in Greta (but of course!). Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle played the creepy Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire with much heart. Ben Robson played Greta's brutish partner Cole, whose abuse drove her to seek this job far away from home.

This is the fourth horror film in a row for director William Brent Bell, the first one he did not write himself. Of his three previous films, B-grade all, I had only seen "The Devil Inside" (my review HERE), a film which most critics hated. "The Boy" was an out-of-the-box script written by Stacey Menear on which Bell applied his B-horror film expertise, coming up with something so crazy yet strangely entertaining in its own way. That sick ending was certainly twisted in more ways than one. 6/10.