Here’s a couple of things about me: I love movie trailers, and I have a weird fascination with finding out the plots of bad horror movies. Which means the trailer for Lauren Cohan’s The Boy is like online catnip for me.

What is this movie even talking about?

There are so many things that seem to have gone wrong that I’m not sure where to begin. I understand that most movies, but most horror movies in particular, have characters displaying a certain level of stupidity. But that stupidity is usually influenced by outside compelling factors: someone else is in peril and the main character needs to protect them; the supernatural danger is coming from the main characters sleep and the victims can’t escape it; they’re stuck in a haunted hotel. In this case, I don’t know how the movie made it out of the initial pitch meeting:

“A woman is a nanny for a doll, and-”

“Why?”

Why is fucking right. Why, when presented with her charge, did Cohan’s character not immediately turn around and tell them to fuck off? This is the age of internet dating. When you show up and a person looks nothing like their profile pic, you leave. When you show up for a nanny job and it’s a doll, you leave. Because even if the doll weren’t haunted by the soul of a dead, killer child, that’s still some creepy ass shit.

Then the weird shit starts happening, and she still just hang outs. Again, why? Who was she protecting? How was she stranded at the house? The grocery boy comes out to the house, couldn’t you just catch a ride back with him? And then when Cohan wants to show someone else how the creepy doll is doing supernatural things, the doll actually does it in front of the other person? Hell no. This is Bad Horror Movies 101. Only one person sees the creepy things happen, and thus the main character believes they’re losing their mind.

But shockingly after the doll confirms, “Yep, I’m doing super creepy shit” in front of other people, the trailer keeps going. What in the sweet holy hell? Again why? Two people see the doll move on his own, one of those people has a car. This movie is over now. You get in the car, and you leave. Or you call a priest/ rabbi/ group of misfit parapsychologists, and make them investigate. Or you just burn that doll to the ground and never think of it again.

Which is why I’m so fascinated with this trailer. What happens in the actual movie that the people cutting the trailer thought, “Yeah, this is the best representation of this film”? Sure, we already know that the doll is in fact supernaturally haunted, we know that the main character figures that out, we know that she responds to that knowledge in the literal worst possible way. So what possible mystery could the trailer editors be hiding from us? What else happens here that the trailer gives away at least a full movie’s worth of plot, and still expect us to want to see it? What is going on?

Actually this might be the most effective thing on the internet because I’m definitely going to have to see this goddamn movie.