The Boy

The Boy casts Lauren Cohan as Greta Evans, an American nanny who arrives at a remote English estate to care for the child of a wealthy couple – with Greta’s enthusiasm for the job souring once she discovers that said child is actually a life-size porcelain doll. (Creepiness inevitably ensues as Greta becomes more and more convinced that the doll is, in fact, sentient.) It’s an inherently silly premise that’s employed to less-than-engrossing effect by director William Brent Bell, as the filmmaker has infused the proceedings with a number of attributes that prevent the viewer from embracing either the material or the characters – with the most obvious example of this undoubtedly the almost unreasonably deliberate pace. The frustratingly slow atmosphere proves effective at highlighting the hoary elements contained in Stacey Menear’s screenplay, with the narrative touching upon virtually all of the expected cliches of the haunted-house genre. (Much of The Boy‘s first half, for example, details Greta’s exploration of the old house and the weird/suspicious noises she begins hearing within.) The inclusion of a few appreciatively larger-than-life sequences breaks up the monotony during the film’s latter half, admittedly, although it’s just as clear that action-oriented final stretch is more tedious and exhausting than anything else – which, when coupled with a climactic twist that couldn’t possibly be more obvious, confirms and cements The Boy‘s place as just another run-of-the-mill, neutered horror effort.

** out of ****