catharine190190
Much better than many thrillers coming out at the moment, although some more clarity on WHY the events occurred would have been nice. The acting was great....up until Cole's entrance. Then it became laughable. I thought he was English with an Irish lilt for the first few lines, then he tried some kind of broad northern American accent, and finally was so inconsistant that any of the tension created up until that point was lost and I was thrown out of the story and into wondering why in anyone's mind was this bloke a decent person to cast. He's meant to be a menacing character, but his standard English accent teamed with some bizarre rhotic Rs to try and sound American was hilarious.
Nigel P
'The Boy' suffers from 'how American writers think English people speak', I'll get that out of the way first. For example, the grocery boy Malcolm (Rupert Evans) says things like "I'm considered quite charming in this country." Evans is encouraged to use a well-spoken but entirely region-free accent throughout. It's not a huge issue, and UK films are not always accurate in their representation of US characters either. If you can get past that - and there are far worse examples out there - then there is much to enjoy with this.Miss Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan), an American Nanny, travels to a gothic mansion to tend to the needs of an elderly couple's young son Brahms. It is difficult to escape the central storyline in the publicity - the fact that Brahms is a doll initially filled me with reservations. Could such a realisation be taken seriously? Andrew Jones' series of low-budget projects involving Robert the Doll is good, for example, but suffers a little when the prop figure is required to move.There was little need to worry: this is a cracker: restrainedly directed by William Brent Bell at least initially, and written in the same way. Greta is just as incredulous as to the notion of a living doll as the most cynical audience member, and yet when she has reason to be convinced if the reality of its existence, we are too. Brahms is a ghostly looking, handsome doll, sometimes very life-like and often lifeless, as necessary.Greta's willingness to care for Brahms is reasoned by a miscarriage she suffered at the hands of an abusive relationship with a character called Cole (Ben Robson). Cole suddenly turns up at the house demanding Greta returns home with him. He is, of course, exactly the kind of overbearing bully we want him to be - and then we can begin the business of desperately wanting some punishment for him. This is when the pace moves from slow-burning build-up to pure horror. When the resultant manifestation of Brahms reveals itself, the fragile build-up takes a step back in favour of Jason/Michael Myers territory; whilst this doesn't carry the same kind of emotional weight we've enjoyed so far, it is still effective. The finale explains things away and makes sense of it all, but there is a slight disappointment that the spell has been punctured with reality. As a whole, though 'The Boy' works beautifully, far better than I expected it to.
