Jillian Hilbish

I have taken the weekend to digest my feelings for this movie and I am finally ready to review it. This movie is a travesty. It's awful, ESPECIALLY if you like the first movie. I, like many others, love the first movie! I wouldn't necessarily call The Boy a cult classic, but I will say that among us who love it, it certainly feels like one. The first film has a very engaging story which was only further complemented by its incredible cast and cinematography. SPOILERS FOR BOTH MOVIES BELOW. The first film focuses on Brahms the doll and his incredibly reluctant babysitter Greta, who was no doubt expecting to babysit an actual human child and was very surprised to come face to face with a very realistic porcelain doll. This doll belongs to the family who employs her, the Heelshires, who made it after the unfortunate death of their young son Brahms. Long story short, for most of the film we are led to believe that this doll is haunted due to the ghoulish shenanigans that always seems to follow it, only for this little porcelain dude to be innocent! The actual culprit of all these hinky hauntings is an ACTUAL dude; the aforementioned dead son Brahms who is now an adult and has grown up living in the walls after his parents faked his death. The doll was a red herring and a pretty good one at that, which is why I was VERY surprised when the new movie decided to just shove this huge plot point right in the garbage. In fact, I was so surprised that I thought the sequel was a more spiritual successor who wanted to tell a new story with a canon divergence. Turns out, I gave the Boy II too much credit. See the pun? Ha! The new story abandons all of its previous lore for a heavy handed story alleging that this doll is actually haunted and has passed itself along multiple families, slaughtering people as it drifts from decade to decade. It makes no sense, especially when you remember that the first film alleges that the Heelshires had the doll made in the likeness of their son. Besides the stupid doll plot, I am also just... underwhelmed by this movie.The acting is OK, the additional story of the family has potential to be engaging but tries too hard and feels like it was only used to plant jump scares like bear traps for all of us bright eyed the Boy fans to step into. And I'll tell you this for free, I was ready to gnaw a limb by the end of this movie. I almost walked out. I desperately wanted this movie to be good, I waited four years for it! But it just wasn't handled the way this series deserved. So for my final thoughts on the Boy II, it is no boy of mine.