The Boy

Of the three new films that opened in town this weekend, The Boy is easily the best. Or to be more accurate, it is the least worthy of derision. As genre fare, it is a competently produced and acted thriller, although gore-hounds will be thoroughly disappointed. This is not the unofficial Child’s Play sequel I was afraid it might be. Rather, The Boy is an “old, dark house” story leaning heavily on the Gothic tropes of that genre. While it is not as stylized as last year’s Crimson Peak, it does place a greater importance on story logic and concision. Unfortunately, much of the atmospheric tension built (sloooowly) in the film’s first hour is squandered by a heavily telegraphed third-act reveal that undercuts its attempts to tell a smaller, more challenging story of trauma-induced madness.

The film’s reliance on atmospheric creepiness over jump scares and violence is commendable, but the pacing of the first two acts is far too deliberate to maintain the tension the script was trying to build. With a heavy dose of Wes Craven and a dash of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas thrown in for good measure, The Boy doesn’t limit itself to the obvious influences its setting and subject matter would suggest. However, none of these influences really come together when things finally do start to happen in that third act, leaving the viewer wracked by a creeping sense, not of dread, but of pointlessness and tonal confusion.

While the cast performs admirably — with Lauren Cohan proving she is more than capable of carrying a feature essentially on her own — the script is not doing her any favors. I spent most of the first act mystified by some of the decisions made by these characters, only to have my questions dismissed by oddly out of place bits of dialogue. In an opening scene, Cohan is greeted by the world’s worst grocery clerk (Rupert Evans) who proceeds to throw himself at her in a very British sort of way. The fact that he neglects to mention to her the nature of the “child” she’ll be caring for is brushed off with a one-line explanation: He didn’t want to spoil the surprise. And yet, she still entertains his advances throughout the film. Maybe I’m a romantic at heart, but I would assume that any interest I might express to a woman heading off to her new job in this scenario would necessarily be preceded by a simple heads-up to the fact she had agreed to work for crazy people. I guess chivalry really is dead.

That the characters still manage to feel underdeveloped when there are essentially only two to focus on in a 90-minute film is perplexing to me, but much of the problem has to do with the film’s fixation on plot twists that are nowhere near as clever as its writer seems to believe. When an unseen abusive ex-boyfriend is mentioned repeatedly throughout the first two-thirds of the movie, it’s a safe bet that he’ll show up in the final third. Add in the fact that every line of dialogue the young boy’s deranged parents spout might as well be spelling out the “surprise” conclusion, and you’re left with a film staunchly convinced that its plot would overshadow its lack of characterization and dramatic interest. Unfortunately this assumption — much like the ones The Boy expects its audience to draw before its climactic big reveal — turns out to be blatantly incorrect.

All that said, I enjoyed The Boy, in spite of its flaws. At its heart, is this film about abusive relationships? Is it about the emotional ramifications of losing a child? Is it about dolls who love brunettes who love peanut butter and jelly? I doubt even the filmmakers could answer definitively. But for a low-budget horror film released in January without being screened for critics, it was not as bad as I had feared, and that was a twist I didn’t see coming. Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, and for some thematic material.