THE BOY
A Disappointing Horror Flick
By Travis Vermulm
I cannot at all say that I had high expectations of the new horror film “The Boy” from STX Entertainment Company, but what miniscule expectations I did have were let down quite strongly. The new film focuses on an American woman, named Greta, moving to the UK for a well-paying nanny job. When Greta (played by Lauren Cohan from “The Walking Dead”) arrives at the large mansion, she discovers that the little child she is tasked with watching is actually a replica glass doll of the owner’s actual son named Brahms.
It is a strange concept for a horror film and the film’s only redeeming quality comes in its originality, especially during the final sequences of the movie. Unfortunately, this strange and creepy original idea is undermined by a large amount of problems. The problems begin from the first frames of the film. The two elderly actors playing Brahms parents are mediocre to say the least. They try to encapsulate the mysterious attitudes of their scripted characters, but the acting only comes off as wooden. Lauren Cohan’s performance is adequate enough, but the script she has to work with does not provide very powerful lines.
Beyond the acting being slightly wooden, another problem was presented within the genre of the film. The movie is supposed to be a horror film. There were a few small moments of false suspense that seemed to be building up to some kind of scare, but the film always seemed to fall short. It was a movie with a run time of an hour and thirty-eight minutes and only twenty minutes of the film was actually very entertaining. There was a general lack of terror and not even a large amount of mystery or curiosity.
The final problem I found with the film was the sloppy screenwriting. The characters seemed to randomly change attitudes towards the entire situation and the character of Greta is given a haphazard reason for leaving America that only serves to help for one scene of the entire film. It was an unnecessary part of the plot and provided a loss of time that could have been spent on trying to make the film actually scary. The dialogue lacked drastically as well.
“The Boy” turned out to be an incredibly disappointing film lacking in several key components of a good horror film. The surprising turn at the end was a positive in the sea of mostly negative aspects. I would not suggest viewing “The Boy” in theaters. Wait until the film comes out on DVD and get a group of friends together to gleefully mock it for a night.
ArgoImpact 