Cast: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Jim Norton, Diana Hardcastle, Ben Robson, James Russell, Jett Klyne
Director: William Brent Bell
Greta (Lauren Cohan) is an American woman recovering from a bad relationship. She takes a job as a nanny in an out of the way British country estate run by an elderly couple. She took the job under the impression that she had to help take care of a little boy called Brahms.
On arrival, however, she discovers that the boy is, in fact, an uncanny child-size doll. The elderly Mr and Mrs Heelshire (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle) lost their child, Brahms, in a fire and believed that their house is haunted with his spirit, and that the doll is, in fact, the receptacle of his ghost. Greta does not believe this at first, but after she is left alone as caretaker of the house, a series of strange occurrences make her increasingly paranoid and vulnerable.
The Boy is a movie that, if I were to descri-be, would leave you unimpressed. If you went with an open mind, this would be an engaging horror-drama with some interesting gothic imaginings.
The chief problem with the film is that the gothic mood that the film is trying to construct isn’t updated to the 21st century. The gothic genre consists of stories set in spooky houses with old-fashioned architecture and décor, relics and ruins.
From this genre we have tropes such as portraits with eyes that follow your movements, long, spooky corridors so dimly lit you need torches to illuminate the path; long, ornate staircases and mirrors in empty rooms that are spookier because of their odd placement.
The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society
