'Brahms: The Boy II' Review—Nightmarishly Dull

Do you remember in 2016 when The Boy came out, and everyone was screaming about how it was the best horror film they had ever seen, and people were rioting in the streets, desperate for a sequel?

Yeah, neither do I. And yet, William Brent Bell helms Brahms: The Boy II, a standalone sequel to The Boy, which follows a family that moves to a new house after a traumatizing incident. Soon after, the son comes across a porcelain doll buried in the woods, and when he decides to keep it, strange events begin to occur, and the mother starts to suspect that it's actually alive.

When you think of a cash grab movie, the first thing that may come to mind is Disney's recent live-action remakes of animated classics. However, this pointless sequel to one of the more mediocre horror films in recent memory proves to be another tasteless cash grab due not only to its unimaginative execution but its handling of the events from the original movie.

There will be SPOILERS for the 2016 film, The Boy, but there will be NO SPOILERS for Brahms: The Boy II in this review. If you're wondering if you need to see The Boy to understand this film, you don't have to, as this is a standalone sequel with different characters, but I need to write about how this movie retcons the first film.

At the end of The Boy, we find out the doll wasn't alive; the real Brahms had been living inside the walls of the house, moving the puppet around to make it appear as if it had been moving on its own. The doll was smashed into pieces and rebuilt by Brahms by the end of the film.

Now, this movie references the events of the original film, but it essentially throws this plot twist in the trash, because as you may have seen in the trailer, Brahms is alive in this movie. His eyes move, his head turns, and the fact that the real Brahms survived is completely forgotten in this film.

Even though this movie has the same writer and director from the first movie, they made the strange decision to invalidate their own work. This decision wouldn't be inherently wrong if they had elevated their previous work and gone in more exciting places with the story and characters from the first film.

Unfortunately, this movie feels like the first draft of an Annabelle script that does nothing that other scary doll movies haven't already done a lot better. The story is derivative of every other film in its genre. Anyone who has watched Child's Play has already seen a movie about a young boy with a creepy new doll and a concerned mother.

The story beats in this film are very by-the-numbers, and it delivers everything you'd expect from a scary doll movie with none of the effective scares you'd expect from a horror movie. The story ends up becoming quite dull as a result due to how uninspired it is and how much it lacks in originality.

Because this movie contains nothing unique, the film isn't scary due to its predictability. The horror sequences have nothing special with their direction and blocking, and this film reuses tired genre tropes from the dream sequences to the jump scares to the static TV.

During a scene where Katie Holmes's character, Liza, is crawling through the walls of a mansion, there is a jump scare sound effect that is unaccompanied by anything frightening. Liza reacted to this scare by turning around, even though the only noise she could have been responding to is the sound effect the editor added in postproduction to give the scene an unnecessary scare.

As for the film's characters, they are very bland. The family we follow faces a traumatic burglary near the beginning of the film. However, this does not amount to anything besides a few dream sequences and a reason for the family to keep the doll.

Because of the event, the son, Jude, does not talk anymore but he begins to speak to Brahms, which is why they allow him to keep it, but there are frightening events that occur where Brahms does things, and Liza knows Jude couldn't have done those things, but she doesn't take any action to stop it.

The events of the film don't push our characters into darker, more emotional places, instead opting for more tired clichés to move the story along. And while the film has acceptable performances, this movie fails to distinguish itself with a unique style.

Due to the film's utter lack of surprises and its sloppy handling of events from the first movie, this film has no reason to exist. It fails to expand on anything from the first movie, as it merely retcons those events instead. The characters aren't the same, and this movie makes the odd choice of keeping some ideas and scenes from the first film and disregarding others.

And the original film does not feel like it was made to be a franchise; the final shot leaves the door open for one, but the filmmakers scrapped its potential by contradicting ideas from the previous film. The Boy II could have been a slasher flick with the same characters from the first one while retaining the doll imagery, but this movie opts for a more supernatural approach.

Where this movie suffered is not only in its lack of effective scares but its endless number of poor choices. For example, the film doesn't address what happened to the real Brahms and where he has been since he survived the stabbing at the end of the first film.

But besides the mishandling of the previous movie, this sequel is so generic and nightmarishly dull in its execution. It's a forgettable film that fails to separate itself from other films with a similar premise and ultimately fails to be scary due to its lack of originality and overreliance on familiar tropes.

Final Grade: Brahms: The Boy II—4/10 (D+)

If you want my two cents, the first movie is mediocre at best, and this one is very dull. These movies do not make up one of the better ongoing horror franchises, and whether you liked or disliked The Boy, this is not an improvement over the original.

The only movies in theaters I'd recommend right now are Birds of Prey and Sonic the Hedgehog. And if you like CGI dogs, check out The Call of the Wild.