Boys will be Boys

Stacey Menear has done something interesting with The Boy, his first feature film. Before you read on, know that there are some spoilers here, so if you haven't yet seen it, do that first; so, yes, I do recommend you see it. Why? Because it is original in many ways, Cohan is a compelling actress, and the director, William Brent Bell, makes tension happen an awful lot with a doll that does very little.

OK. So, come back here AFTER you have seen it because I don't want to spoil anything.

Lauren Cohan (Greta) shows her amazing talent as an actress throughout this mystery thriller. She has a strong on-screen presence in a plot that, surprisingly, delves into a hybrid-genre of sorts, starting as a curious drama, quickly unfolding into something seemingly supernatural and mysterious, and then culminating into a surprising dreadful finale.

I'm quite impressed by Cohan's ability to take on the role of a woman who is friendly, caring, and simple, and who, like any normal person, laughs when she realizes that her new nanny job for the next few months means taking care of a porcelain life-size doll named Brahms. The parents, Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire, however, find nothing humorous about it. This is their son, after all. And, here are the rules you must follow (one is to talk loudly and clearly, another is that no guests are allowed) and then as they make their way off to their vacation getaway, Mrs. Heelshire whispers a regretful-like "I'm sorry" to Greta. Uh? OOOOKKKK. This is when we first wonder why would Greta stay? What compels her?

Fortunately, Meaner explains this with a good backstory: there's a restraining order on her ex, Cole, who was an abusive drunk and managed to kill their unborn child during one of his violent fits. She needs a break, to get away from Cole. This English manor is the perfect getaway from him. Secondly, what easier way to make lots of money than to babysit a doll? And thirdly, the grocery boy, Malcolm, confides to her that the Heelshires lost Brahms to a fire when he was eight years old and that the doll came into the picture soon thereafter. Greta, herself, knows what it's like to lose a child, so empathy becomes her larger reason for staying.

Then we learn from Malcolm that Mr. Heelshire described his own son, the real Brahms, as "odd". And that a little girl, Emily, was playing with Brahms and then her body was found in the nearby woods. To top that off, supernatural things begin happening, like Greta's clothes disappearing and Brahms laughing in the distance, running unseen, and moving himself around the house. We never see the doll move on its own (aside from a sudden magnetic twist of the head in response/rejection to Greta trying to turn it manually). It's interesting how much eeriness and mystique Bell creates with a doll who we never actually see move. As Greta later shows Malcolm, Brahms only moves when no one is looking. And yet, the mystery deepens because Brahms continues to appear to be nothing more than a simple doll. So now comes the question we asked before. Why does she stay?

It seems that Greta is realizing that she has stumbled into a precarious and supernatural situation and that it's better to follow the rules than to be followed by a doll who will surely not let her go. If she can just stick it out, she will be OK. By this time, I was convinced that the real Brahms survived the fire and that the parents, in their demented state of mind, kept him alive inside a doll (too horribly disfigured) and that he had some sort of Tiny Tim condition. I was partly right. By the end, we realize why Mrs. Heelshire's parting words were an urgent apology--Brahms did survive that fire and they knew it all along SPOILER for another movie! (reminding me of House of Wax's twist) and the doll is just a doll. The real Brahms lives inside the walls (explaining the rule to talk loudly and clearly) and, it seems, he has made his parents a doll-like version of himself, an "acceptable" looking version through which he controls them, laying out his rules and demands, which is why they go away to kill themselves and leave her as a caretaker to their son. That's my understanding. That these rules were his, not theirs, because he needed someone to take care of him, he is forever eight years old (dead to everyone else) and it's also his way to make them his keeper. And they couldn't bear to live like this anymore, so under the guise that they were simply going away on a vacation, they were knowingly using Greta to replace themselves as Brahm's caretaker.

Here is [another SPOILER about a TV show] where I liken it to Bates Motel. Like Norma Bates, who loves her son Norman and protects him and his wrongdoings from the world, these parents hid him away and pretended he had died to protect him, but after over twenty years, they couldn't take it anymore. But why they made Greta a potential sacrifice to him, I don't quite understand. I have some questions about that and about why they interacted with the doll instead of the real Brahms. It's as though he hated his own appearance so much that he made the doll (or made them make the doll) to live vicariously through, and the parents were so afraid of him and his "oddness" that they played the game.

So, an interesting movie, but one that needs a prequel so that we can see how it all began and how it got to this strange point.

#TheBoy #eerie #horror #mystery #thriller #StaceyMenear #LaurenCohan #WilliamBrentBell