I had the same issue with this film that I had with Sinister 2. Sinister 1 created an absolutely fantastic story of this demon that haunted children and made them kill their family before taking them away, and since the sequel just took that idea and completely ruined it, unfortunately that’s what this film did for the original The Boy.

In this sequel a family move into the house near the original residents after the mother and son are attacked in a home invasion. Jude is the young boy who has mutism and finds Brahms the doll buried in the woods. Because the doll helps Jude come out of his shell, despite how creepy it is, the parents Liza and Sean decide to allow him to keep it to encourage him to start talking. This is where things go awry however when Brahms starts making his usual demands that he did in the first film, yet the family do not abide by them, and chaos ensues.

We found out in The Boy that there isn’t a bad demon in the doll and that it was simply a doll and the person that was moving and controlling it was the son (of the original owners) who was hiding in the walls of the house. I really like that, I really like the inclusion of the switch where you think it’s a supernatural horror but really it’s just another home invasion. Yet in this film it did make Brahms the doll supernatural, we saw his eyes move on their own, we saw his head move on its own and so all the excitement and mystery from the first film is completely lost because it’s just another supernatural horror.

We soon find out that the doll has been in control of all of the murders and fires and devastating acts that happened in the old house for decades and he is just continuing his reign of terror with this next family. The inclusion of demons speaking to people as a sort of mental illness and having that cause them to act out and cause destruction has been done for years now and is nothing new. However when this film was based off a film with a premise that hinted at a supernatural element but then completely changed it to be a much more realistic makes watching this one very frustrating, because they basically have gone back on the original. It made this film lose a lot of tension for me, I didn’t care that the doll was evil, I didn’t care that only people who interacted with the doll could be affected. I cared about the fact that there was someone living in the walls and they could be living in any walls in any house and you would have no idea. To have the doll being the evil in the story really cheapened it for me because it’s something we have seen done many times before and and, as I said, almost completely ruined the original film.

I will say I didn’t have high hopes going into this film because horror sequels are often quite underwhelming and it’s sad for this film to fit that bill too. So while the first film bought something new to the table that we hadn’t really seen before, to have this one go down the usual supernatural doll route that we see with other films such as Annabelle was really frustrating, and in some ways I wish I didn’t waste my time watching it.

If you wanted good horror then watch the original, I’m not saying it’s a stellar movie and Oscar worthy, but it’s definitely 10x better than this one. It bought different ideas to the table and kept you on your toes, and the people in it were actually intriguing and exciting, whereas this family is like any other horror family cliche. All in all, despite being a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to horror films, I found this film very boring.

What do you think of The Boy 2?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding