The Boy

The boy I make bad decisions with my money.

I've always admired the phrase, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." In the horror genre we've adapted our own version of this Neil Young lyric that reads, "It's better to spontaneous combust than to do exactly what Housebound already did better."

there once was a boy who felt born into the wrong body, and so he was unsure what he was supposed to be. was he perhaps a psychological horror movie? maybe a paranormal investigation film? a slasher flick? romance? gay porn? sportscast? he really didn't know. and so, no one else did. which is a shame, because when he first tried for psycho-horror, he seemed promising for...ah, i'm bored with my own analogy. lauren cohan is hot. beer. more beer.

Spent a lot of it's time building up a creepy mystery only to completely destroy it in the third act. You had me....then you let me fall. For shame!

There are myriad reasons why one might turn down a job as a live-in nanny: the pay is bad, the location is inconvenient, the accommodations are lacking, the child is a porcelain doll, the cell phone reception is poor. If you accept the position anyway, then you have no one but yourself to blame for not being able to download the latest Candy Crush update. Oh, and for when stabby-cakes porcelain doll boy begins his wholly unwholesome tom-fuckery.

I liked this more then I expected I like evil dolls and evil kids movies So I enjoyed the way they cleverly combined the two genres

I'm in two minds about the twist, though it was foreshadowed throughout the movie. In a dark and twisted sense, I feel this movie missed some very interesting romantic possibilities.

Lauren Cohan was mesmerizing, vulnerable & absolutely gorgeous. Rupert Evans was good. The plot had a few chuckle worthy moments. Too much loud spooky music & blacked out scenes. When the abusive ex-boyfriend shows up it gets even worse. The predictable ending is revealed with blurry flashes of light in the darkness & far too little horror imagery. Basically, a long build up to a really crappy ending. The final scenes must have been so bad, they had to edit out most of it & blur the rest.

To be honest with you, I didn't hate it. It's not a good horror movie and the twist is not well done, but at least it creates some surprise and lets this be something you can't predict. Might be worth your time, probably not.

I was so enchanted by this movie - I loved the careful cinematography, the use of light and silhouettes, the subtlety and slowly building tension: the pacing and weaving of the story was impeccable, and I felt this was a doll movie unlike other doll movies. That is, until it was haphazardly and messily revealed that it wasn't a doll movie at all, but a rather pathetic imitation of a stranger in the walls story. Extremely disappointing ending: would not recommend.

The male Annabelle (2014).... except the doll wasn't even scary. Almost nothing was. They really delayed the big reveal and most of it is like light drama with about 10 minutes of slasher stuff.

Horror is one of those controversial film categories that moviegoers either love or really and truly hate. These films are often layered with so many genre clichés and ham-handed jump scenes--not to mention splattered with gobs of blanch-worthy goop--that watching one with a popcorn-munching, Saturday matinee, casual viewer's sensibilities is really quite impossible. (pluggedin.com)

A mildly effective creepy horror flick at the start,but once all is revealed, the trumpery overpowers with timeworn setting in.

Interesting mainly because of Lauren Cohan co-starring with a creepy doll. Fans of creepy dolls will bet let down by the direction. There's some shades of build up only for it all to deflate into a ridiculous plot and lack of directorial creativity. It's unfortunate because all the potential is there for something good but it just couldn't manage to do anything with something as basic as the creepy doll genre. This still isn't all that bad because this is the horror genre after all.

The Boy is another bad, but not offensively terrible, horror movie this January. Its first hour is filled with boredom and jump startles, while its final half hour changes direction into a pretty insubstantial slasher that's brought about by a severely stupid twist. The acting and cinematography are both fine, but they're in service of a horror movie that wastes its potentially strong elements and isn't very scary. The Boy isn't good, but we've seen far, far worse.

This is a bad movie, there isn't any way around it. Cohan (my main reason watching this thanks to her Walking Dead fame) and Evans are actually decently likable on screen and actually enjoy watching their little banter/flirting, but this is devoid of anything genuinely scary. The last 30 minutes felt very rushed, and it's twist, while interesting in scope, is predictable and poorly executed to a point where it felt more like a thriller than a horror film. You can skip out on this.

not as bad as i thought it would be, it's actually fine sometimes, but oh god that twist, wtf were they thinking with that twist.

Actually a fairly singular flip of the "possessed doll" genre with a legitimately freaky final act. Cohan is a surprisingly charismatic lead, and the small details set up in the early parts of the film pay off in a way that's rare for a throwaway horror flick. Ultimately, it is forgettable, but it's still an entertaining watch without many glaring flaws.

We've seen creepy dolls before and "The Boy" does have a pretty slow start, but Cohan is hot so it's not like there's nothing to look at. There's a lot of kick back going on about the twist at the end, but I, for one, was pointing at the screen, screaming at my girlfriend with elation when it happened.

Actress emotes at a lifeless doll for an hour, until even the director gets bored and just steals some scenes from classic slasher movies to end it all.

bad movie

It makes not a lick of sense, but we don't care because it moves along at a brisk enough clip and sports its fair share of silly jolts. Cohan is not gonna win any Oscars for her acting here, but we don't care because she's really hot. Check your brain, shotgun a beer or two beforehand, and I suspect you'll dig this OTT guilty pleasure okay. I did, at least.

Shame on me for getting disappointed again by a movie that was almost certainly going to be bad, or shame on them for completely ruining the plot?

Not terrible but too many questionable moments to overlook.

There's not enough story to fill even a slim running time, and the pacing is terrible

It's a creepy horror film, but the last 15 minutes is probably the best way to potentially have a follow up franchise.

Actually a pretty decent horror film for the majority of the running, possibly due to the inherent creepiness of the doll, which has basically built a cabin in the middle of the uncanny valley. It feels like it's building up to something supernatural and horrifying, which makes it all the more disappointing when the twist happens. It doesn't work nearly as well as it did (spoiler alert) Housebound, and the film ends with 15 minutes of being a mediocre thriller instead of a good horror flick.

Dolls/puppets have always scared the shit out of me with the root of it traced back to Slappy from Goosebumps and the dolls my grandmother insists on buying. This was okay. They sure fed you some red herring in this one.

Just weird enough to make it memorable.

Bom plot, mas não o suficiente pra sustenta o filme.

A couple of asinine jump scares notwithstanding, it is an effective horror movie that keeps the dread levels high and its twist is reasonably well executed.

feels really slow to begin with then gets a little better but it still feels slow the twist is well executed but is a bit out of the blue

The build up was okay, and the unexpected part was unexpected. It kind of takes the excitement away a little, after it. Still an experience for most of it. I wouldn't watch it twice however.

Interesting idea, and creepy dolls have always bothered me. This one was just ok though.

A haunted doll is not necessarily the worst place to start for a horror movie, but the film's biggest problem is its inability to have any fun with its premise; literalising the morbid circumstances around the doll's creation, and playing the parent's demented grief-stricken delusions for "real", gets the film off to a wobbly start that it never quite recovers from; after that, it's a dull (and ultimately maddening) series of jump-scare fake-outs, until a silly (and arbitrary) finale.

Just go outside, idiot.

The Boy is extremely dull but it isn't ever painful to sit through. It seems like it was made to be the most generic horror possible, minus the terrible twist end. As bad as this is, Lauren Cohan is still doing better than if she decided to stay on The Walking Dead.

In a comparison better for how unfair it seems, I think the differences between this and Stuart Gordon's lively DOLLS say a lot about how plodding and one-note most present-day horror is. Who wants to watch a killer-doll-in-a-big-weird-house movie with wall-to-wall syrupy strings shot and paced like a portentous TV drama (with way more orange and teal) that still spends almost an hour tiresomely going through the whole phew-it-was-only-a-coat-rack thing? Cohan's face is occasionally expressive.

This is one of the very rare instances that I really enjoyed a possessed doll film. Its definitely a love it or hate it film, and you'll know which one you are by the third act, and for me, I loved the third act. Honestly, I enjoyed every act, as there was a great sense of building tension, red herrings and foreshadowing. I liked it

I liked where the film was taking me up to the twist, while its a cool idea it didn't work for me.

if you can appreciate the fact something like this was even made, you'll enjoy the 3 or 4 memorable bits in here. ridiculously shameless lol

1

Mom guessed the ending 30 mins in, Im supposed to be the movşe dude. Doesn't have much going for it.

50% creepy doll movie, 50% scary child movie, 100% cliches. Avoid.

I really liked how it turned out in the end.

I'm very picky when it comes to horror movies and i vas pretty sure I would hate this. Luckily it was pretty good. It was'n very scary but it managed to have my attention throughout the movie and the ending was pretty darn good. Iv'e seen a similar ending once so i can't say it's 100% original but it's a great ending nevertheless.

Greta, die Amerikanerin, staunt beim Anblick des englischen Herrenhauses, es sehe ja auch wie im Bilderbuch. Wir, die Zuschauer, möchten sie korrigieren, denn längst wissen wir mehr: Es sieht aus wie in einem Horrorfilm. Bereits während der ersten Minuten hat William Brent Bell gleich eine ganze Reihe Vorbilder aus den 70ern zitiert, ob es nun das Gebäude selbst ist oder die lange Einfahrt dahin... mehr auf cinegeek.de