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13 Questions About the Horror Movie 'The Boy'

By Jodi Smith | Lists | July 5, 2017 |

By Jodi Smith | Lists | July 5, 2017 |


For some reason, I watched the 2016 movie The Boy the other night. On purpose and everything. After the slog through the boring and unsurprising plot, I was still left with more questions than answers. Perhaps some of you can help me find answers or just agree that this shit movie is ridiculous.

Spoiler for this piece of shit movie below.

Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) stars as American nanny, Greta. My first question:

1. Why did the Heelshires hire an American to nanny for their “son” when they lived in England? It is very possible I missed an explanation for this while doing whatever I was doing at the beginning of this eternally sloooow flick, so help me out here.

Once the Heelshires leave on holiday, Greta decides to ignore the porcelain kid. Fine.

2. Why does Greta make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, eat half of it, and then open an entire bottle of wine only to pour herself a glass and FALL THE FUCK ASLEEP?? You want to shirk the responsibilities you were hired to perform because the old couple appears bonkers and you aren’t into treating dolls like living, breathing people? FINE. But what you DON’T DO is come up in someone’s English mansion and waste good wine, you traitorous ass.

Before her wine-wasting nap, Greta covers the doll (Brahms) with a blanket. After waking from her wine-free nap, she finds the blanket on the floor.

3. Why would you not assume shenanigans at once? Why would you just throw Brahms in his room, in a chair?

This movie has at least two jump scares delivered via dreams that the audience supposedly doesn’t know are dreams.

4. HOW FUCKING LAZY ARE YOU, WRITER STACEY MENEAR AND DIRECTOR WILLIAM BRENT BELL?

Greta’s only companion while caring for Brahms is the delivery man, Malcolm (Rupert Evans). They talk about Brahms and it is revealed that the real child died in a fire twenty years ago, on his eighth birthday. Malcolm asks Greta to accompany him out on the town. When he arrives at the house to pick her up, no one answers the door.

5. Malcolm, what the shit? You know that no one is in that house but Greta and that she has no car, knows no one, and has no place to go. Why would you leave the house without checking on her well-being? She was shut in the attic, but she could have fallen down the forty flights of stairs or choked on the wine she wasted. Are you stupid?

Related:

6. Was the towel Greta wrapped herself in after her shower magical? She was able to realize her clothes were missing, look in her room for them, climb into the attic, try to bust out a window/vent thing, and then fall backward over a chair without the towel falling off of her. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. I cannot even walk out of the bathroom before my towel falls off my ass. And she fell to the floor without her twat flashing the camera.

Malcolm comes by to tease Greta for being scared, blah blah. He leaves and Greta is in her room when she starts hearing the noises of a child. The doll appears to move on its own, noises happen, and then the phone in Greta’s room rings. When she answers, a child tells her to follow the rules. Then there are more noises and a child’s voice promising to be good. The child’s voice then says that he’s made her favorite for her and the sound of a tray sliding in front of Greta’s door is heard. She opens the door and there is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

7. How does someone see this and then get excited and promise to follow the rules left by the Heelshires for the care of their doll? HOW DO YOU NOT RUN SCREAMING THROUGH THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE IN YOUR HASTE TO BE AWAY FROM THE WRETCHED THING HOW.

Greta believes a spirit is in the doll and tells Malcolm as much. She proves it to him by showing him how the doll moves: when asked to do so and when no one is looking. She vows to never leave Brahms and shares that she was beaten and suffered a miscarriage by an ex-boyfriend alluded to earlier in the movie. Then she talks to someone on the phone and they tell Greta that they’ve given that ex-boyfriend, Cole, the address of the English estate where she’s staying.

8. Are you fucking kidding me here? This is where we’re going?

To the surprise of no one, Cole shows up at the English estate.

9. How does a piece of shit redneck bastard make enough money to take time off of work and buy a ticket to goddamned England that quickly? There is NO WAY that bitch has a passport.

Cole is a dickweed and hates the doll. Malcolm shows up, Malcolm leaves to sleep in his car outside the mansion in case Cole decides to beat the shit out of Greta. Great. Greta puts Brahms to bed and asks him to help her out with Cole the dick weasel. Brahms writes “GET OUT” in rat’s blood above Cole’s head and leaves the rat corpses in his duffel. Great.

Cole gets pissed, grabs the doll, and busts the porcelain head on a chair. The house begins to rumble and a grown Brahms busts out of the wall via mirror. He starts beating the shit out of everyone with that patented brute strength shut-in psychopaths have and he stabs Cole in the neck with a chunk of doll face. Here’s the thing though:

10. If Brahms was in a fire 20 years ago, how does he have a full head of thick hair, a beard that would be the envy of every lumberjack, and chest hair like Gaston?? Later, the mask (Big Boy Brahms is wearing a porcelain doll mask) falls off and a burned face is revealed.

11. Did Brahms stick his face only in the fire? Where the doctors able to graft manly, hairy pieces onto him but looked at the burned face and were like, “Nah, but we have this creepy doll mask for you, bruv”?

The end is the normal ending, with Greta stabbing Brahms and saving Malcolm. They escape and then we go back to the mansion to find “someone” wearing Brahms’ sweater gluing the porcelain Brahms’ face back together.

12. Is a screwdriver to the guts with no hope of medical help really something overcome so easily?

13. How the hell did Brahms get all of Cole’s neck gore off of that chunk of doll face? I mean, really. This may be the most confounding part of the whole movie.