Review of The Boy (2016) by Thomas D — 24 Jan 2016

Perhaps revival is a strong word, but I really enjoyed watching The Boy. My expectations for horror films have significantly lowered especially after seeing the criminally cliched The Forest earlier this year. The Boy is pretty generic and cliched by its premise "a girl, running from her past, is asked to babysit a boy, or a doll rather, and is left alone for weeks by herself in an old mansion that is extremely secluded from other homes." Just by reading that I get the feeling a film like this would be filled with jump scares and unoriginal and boring characters. While the film does have its fair share of silly moments, its a refreshingly entertaining installment for the Horror genre.

The Boy stars Lauren Cohan, from Walking Dead fame, who plays Greta. For the most part, the film is shrouded in mystery. The strong suits of the film lie in its secrecy. Much like The Forest a few weeks back, the build up to the reveal of the film is probably better than the actual reveal itself, though the ending is pretty great. With that said, as Greta learns to somehow grapple with the fact that she's babysitting a doll who closely resembles a boy who used to live in the house, the film grows weaker and weaker. The horror of the film takes a big rain check for the middle 30 minutes of the film.

Dolls usually scare people for various reasons, and this doll is no different. The whole time you're guessing how and why the doll is doing the things that its doing and there were plenty of stupid ways to go about revealing that. The film does a good job at covering the reveal with multiple other cliched possibilities that we all (including myself) believed it would be, thankfully the director went in a different direction. So in all, The Boy was a solid experience at the theater. Its not going to keep you awake at night like great horrors do, but I don't think it will disappoint either. I'm really glad to see someone from a prominent television show make a good transition and show promise for a future film career, well done Lauren Cohan.

+Cohan holds her own.

+Creepy, unnerving moments.

+Jump scares are timely.

-Middle half takes a turn for the worse.

-Build up is probably better than the reveal.

6.7/10.