'Brahms: The Boy II' Movie Review

Brahms: The Boy II is a fairly loose sequel to The Boy from 2016. After a traumatic experience, young Jude (Christopher Convery) is rendered mute. His parents (Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman) decide to move to what was the guest house on a grand estate; the same estate formerly occupied by the Heelshire family in the first film. Jude finds the doll, Brahms, in the woods behind the house, and he quickly becomes attached to the doll. But strange, sinister things begin happening around the house, and nobody can figure out who's doing them.

The Boy from 2016 was kind of "meh", if you ask me. The grand, Gothic sets were pretty cool and atmospheric. But it didn't really have much in the way of actual scares, and it's big ending twist, while unexpected, was just too farfetched, and it raised way more questions than answers. This sequel is much less jarring, but it’s utterly boring. I don’t remember once being invested in this film. It's just nothing. It exists. I'm not gonna spoil the big twist of the first movie, ludicrous as it may be, just in case you do plan on watching it. However, Brahms seemingly negates that twist, and instead says that said subversion of expectations was merely the result of the more obvious circumstances and conclusion. For those who are fans of the first, this will probably be pretty frustrating. If anything, it's just lazy and spineless, and it relegates the movie to just being a dull, watered-down ripoff of Child's Play.

Oddly enough, all of the acting in the film is pretty solid. Katy Holmes does a good job of being the classic "worried mother" horror archetype, and while I'm not incredibly familiar with Owain Yeoman, his performance as the dad is quite serviceable. Christopher Convery, who plays young Jude, is able to get some great moments out of the somewhat tired "kid being blamed for the villain's mischief" cliché. The best actor, and character, in the film is Ralph Ineson, who plays Joseph the groundskeeper. He's one of those character actors who has been in dozens of movies and shows, and he's instantly recognizable, but has never made it beyond "that guy in that one movie" status. He adds as much weight as he can to his character, despite having very little to work with. It’s just so unfortunate. The cast is clearly capable, and none of them appear to be phoning it in, but it isn’t enough.

One of the things that the 2016 film did well was establishing a solid atmosphere and making good use of its grand setting. While this sequel does have a few nice-looking sets, it never really manages to create much of a mood. This, again, comes down to the fact that this movie just doesn’t have anything behind it. This film featured the same writer/director team as the first, and they showed us quite clearly that they have at least some potential. I really hope that The Boy was not the best of which they are capable, because this is a major step down, and I’d like to see them create something that is truly great. I will at least say that, towards the end, there was one cool visual that would have been a lot creepier if it felt like it was part of a good product. And again, Ineson is really trying his damnedest to add some pathos during the finale, but to no avail.

While The Boy may have been simply mediocre, Brahms: The Boy II is flat-out dull and lifeless. Every step of the plot is predictable, and it seems as if no effort was made to add any sort of unique ideas to the tired story. The cast is game, but the end result is just an absolute slog.

SCORE: 1.5/5