Director: William Brent Bell
Notable Cast: Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman, Christopher
Convery, Ralph Ineson, Anjali Jay
The Boy became something of a surprise success. It
did some bank in the box office, compared to its budget, and generated quite
the word of mouth, particularly from its finale. However, it was a film that
existed too firmly in a generic blue print for most of its run time. In my
opinion, even its fantastic third act couldn’t quite lift it above being a mediocre
horror film. The shock of this recently released sequel wasn’t that it existed,
the original was a hit, but that it took four years for it to finally come out
in theaters.
The big question of the sequel is how does one follow up the
first film’s reveal and still maintain the concept without diverting the idea
and tone in drastic ways? If you were to judge by what Brahms: The Boy II
is delivering to its audiences, you can’t. Where the first film generated a lot
of fun moments with some decent performances and slick production, Brahms
fails to generate, well, anything. It’s a snoozer that meanders through its
formula with such a wooden sense of purpose, one would be surprised that everyone
working on the film wasn’t a puppet.