Review of The Boy (2016) by Thequietgamer — 25 Jun 2016

It's got some interesting ideas floating around, but fails to capitalize on any of them with scares. It's one of those boring horror flicks where you're actually waiting around for something to happen. While you're left waiting around it toys around with themes of abuse and gives us overly long shots staring at a doll that's appearance lost it's unsettling nature early on.

Despite being one of the more unique and weird mainstream horror movies to come out in a long time, it ultimately still feels overly familiar. Plenty of it's scare tactics are borrowed so that when it finally does get around to trying to freak you out it has no effect. There's a pretty great twist near the end that also ends up being borrowed from another movie. I can't tell you what movie that is though, because it would spoil things. That twist is one of the few things the movie has going for it.

There's just not much happening here. They tried to go for a more personal, dramatic side of things and as a result left out the scares. It also doesn't help that they never manage to actually say anything on the topic of abusive relationships. They really needed to focus on the actual horror.

However just how scary would a haunted/possessed doll actually be? Perhaps a campier route would have made for a better movie. At least then we could have gotten some laughs from the material. Of course you may still get those anyway. The person I watched it with found it very funny. However they also found the thing more watchable than I did.

It is actually very watchable. The question is, why would you? While the genre isn't exactly brimming with haunted doll movies, and The Boy does manage to tower over Annabelle as far as quality goes (Annabelle might have actually been scarier), this just isn't a good horror flick.

It touches on some interesting themes, has a nice twist, and didn't cut out the (totally PG) shower scene like The Forest did, but none of that makes it worth watching. It's downright boring for the majority of it's running time. There are plenty of worse options out there, but you are still better off skipping this babysitting misadventure.

4.