Harefooted Halloween: The Boy

What I Liked: When Greta (Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead, All Eyez on Me)) is introduced as the new nanny to the little boy Brahms who is revealed to actually be a doll made me laugh out loud.  The parents treat the doll like a real human son so they’re acting sincere the whole time.  And the filmmakers must’ve realized this was an unavoidably silly moment because they had Greta laugh as well.

A lot of the movie is like a one woman show with Greta in the house by herself suspecting the doll is alive and playing games with her.  This is a somewhat demanding role and Cohan does a serviceable job.  Not really great but solid.

Spoilers from here on out

What I Didn’t Like: The twist with Brahms being an actual grown person living in the walls is incredibly fucking stupid.  Putting aside the terrible fact that we’ve seen this done many times before, I have a lot of questions.  Here are a few:

How did Brahms and his parents come to the agreement that he would live inside the walls?  Even if it was only for the couple of week period seen in the film that still seems like it would take some hard convincing.

With being a huge six foot plus dude living in the walls how did Brahms exist back there without making tons of noise in his movements and shenanigans like shifting the doll around the house and stealing Greta’s clothing and all of that?

Why do Brahms’ parents bother putting on the charade that the doll is their son in the first place?  They’re clearly all completely insane and the parents could’ve gotten a girl from anywhere nearby to throw to their son.

Why did the parents commit suicide?  They couldn’t handle taking care of Brahms any longer?  They could’ve left and never come back without killing themselves.

What exactly was Brahms’ plan anyway?  Was he ever going to reveal himself if the doll wasn’t smashed and Greta’s life wasn’t threatened, or was he going to continue to live in the walls for the rest of his life?

Overall Impressions: It goes without saying this is a dumb fuckin’ movie (shit, why did I just say that then?).  Everything from the exceedingly generic title, to the asshole boyfriend character that’s only in the film to get killed, to the odd plastic CGI looking doll design, it’s all pretty bad.  If you’re scared of dolls there might be something for you (personally they’re not for me) but you can do much better with something like Child’s Play 2.  At least that has personality.

I was hoping this would be funny based on the awkward introduction of the doll sitting in a wingback chair but that was the only part that gave me a chuckle.  It doesn’t go on to be like a serious version of John Oliver’s Harding trailer that stars a wax mannequin in the titular role.  No, unfortunately the rest was boring and filled with crap you don’t really care about.