Welcome to the Dollhouse -- THE BOY

After watching THE BOY, I've found that most of the reviews for it range between glowingly lukewarm to outright mockery. This isn't without merit, as the film falls flat on more than a few points. However, I can't help but get the feeling that the more negative reviews are written by slightly biased authors. At best, they seem to feel that their critical palates are above munching on popcorn horror (meanwhile singing the praises of Conjuring 2: Euro-Trip); at worst, they call to mind the heckling of adolescent boys, breaking every moment of attempted suspense with cackling and cries of "That's not even scary!"

Let me be clear: THE BOY is not great, and its biggest flaw is that it's derivative of better movies. You could play Horror Bingo with as many tropes this film tics off. The beautiful American visits a foreign land for ambiguous reasons, waffling between scoffing at the local color and being captivated by it. The creepy old couple keep to themselves, yet hide a sinister secret.The spooky isolated mansion is filled with ominous oil paintings and dusty taxidermy. The attic door opens and closes on its own. The phone rings and there's only breathing on the other end. There's even a scene of our protagonist walking down a dark hallway on a stormy night holding a pillar candle and wearing a shimmering negligee, an image so painfully familiar I believe it's been with us since the dawn of film. But there's something to be said for aesthetics, and THE BOY is trying its very best to give you every impression that it is indeed a scary movie. It's both completely appropriate and sigh-inducing.

Yet, out of all these tired tropes, there is one that I just can't get enough of: creepy dolls. It's one of the few horror staples that actually has some significance to my reality. Like any girl, I've owned my fair share of dolls (and, like any woman-child, I'm not immune to still buying one every now and then....I waited my whole life to be an adult so I could buy all the toys I wanted!) I had all kinds, from a boxful of naked Barbies to my very own Woody doll (my name scrawled on the bottom of his boot, natch), to every little girl's ideal practice for motherhood, Baby Tumbles Surprise. Everyone had a part to play in the soap operas I enacted on my bedroom floor. But in every child's life, there will be one adult that just doesn't get it. My great aunt gifted me with at least three porcelain dolls in my childhood, all of them beautiful and surely expensive, with lush curly hair and hand-painted faces and fantastic Victorian-era clothes. I absolutely hated them. I told myself it was because the dolls just weren't my style--they represented a too-feminine frilly-ness I refused to relate to at that age. But the hard truth was I couldn't bear to look at them. Despite being beautifully dressed and lovingly made, their faces troubled me in a way that even my Steve Urkel doll did not. Their expressions were unanimously somber: lifeless glass eyes hovering above listless, pouting lips, all set atop ghostly pale, cold skin. These works of art were instantly stashed in my closet under a mountain of clothes, still cased in the boxes they arrived in. Few nights passed without thinking about them with cold dread: pretending to sleep in their cardboard coffins, seething with resentment over a life without a child's love, biding their time until they could wrestle their way out of my closet and come toddling over to my bed, begging for playtime with their sweet English accents.

It's only a little bit funny that I finally felt comfortable with scary dolls in the movies only after those porcelain nightmares were long gone to the Goodwill, off to haunt someone else's sleepless nights.

This is to say that one thing THE BOY does absolutely right is Brahms, the titular boy that is not a boy but a life-size doll that is treated as a beloved child. Brahms is a consistently unnerving presence throughout the film, staring vacantly into the camera with sad glass eyes and his trim little suit. Unlike sweet-faced Talky Tina or ham-fistedly sinister Annabelle, Brahms is quietly understated, neither endearing nor terrifying. He's just Brahms--doing his thing, listening to opera, reading poetry, playing quietly (very, very quietly) by himself. He's a classy little guy, if not a tad moody. In a lot of ways, he's kind of the perfect child.

No back-sass from this one.

For the entire film, you're waiting for Brahms to move. The camera zooms in close, and you're searching for even the smallest hint of life in that shiny little face. Throughout the movie, I felt the only thing that could truly ruin it for me is the thing that stains most haunted toy movies on some level: the big reveal of the Living Doll. After such a restrained buildup of tension, I couldn't bear it if it was all leading up to this dignified porcelain lad suddenly turning into Chucky. Scuttling around the house in his teeny tiny shoes, brandishing a kitchen knife half his size, screaming expletives, biting ankles, eventually getting tossed into the fireplace...it all seemed so below Brahms. Thankfully, the movie takes an entirely different approach to their creepy doll.  Not once does Brahms break character, and when he does break, it's into a thousand pieces.

All the tension lies in the mystery of Brahms, and it is here that the film seems to know exactly what it's doing, teasing out that secret for as long as possible. Perhaps it knows what it's doing all along, letting us get comfortable in these all-too-familiar trappings of a typical scary movie, letting us tic off our bingo cards and roll our eyes, letting us think we know exactly where it's going. I, for one, spent most of the movie with a sour face and plenty of scoffing, only by the end to get the rug yanked out from under me, but good.

The reviews will tell you the film's twist is both batshit insane and completely stupid, turning a lackluster movie into a complete waste of time. I won't defend the insane part, because it totally is, but stupid is a bit harsh. It's a downright horrifying revelation. It's not exactly airtight when you retrace the film, but credit where credit is due--it was a big fucking surprise. In fact, it made the whole damn mess worthwhile, at least for me.

I do take issue with the immediate and obvious sexualization of our pretty protagonist Greta, but that's like saying I take issue with Leatherface using his chainsaw as a dick replacement: it's just like "What did you expect, idiot?" Within fifteen seconds of screen time, Greta gets leered at by her cab driver and self-conciously covers her cleavage. Not ten minutes later, the grocery boy (a charming but often irritating exposition-machine Rupert Everett) asks her out within moments of meeting her. Brahms' mother wastes no time informing her that the previous nannies didn't work out because they "weren't as pretty as you." And Brahms...well Brahms is just a lonely little boy. It's Clarice Starling all over again, sniffed after by every man in her vicinity simply because she is a nearby female. In short, it's hard to watch, and kind of icky.

THE BOY is not perfect. It suffers from too many obvious influences, weird shifts in tone and inexplicable plot developments. (The sudden appearance of Greta's psycho ex is one example; he serves as unseen backstory until he's needed to scoot the climax along.) But for all it's paint-by-the-numbers pussy-footing, it seems to have a firm grasp on how to build a proper mystery. And it gives due respect to the motif of creepy doll. For once, I can be purely terrified by a blank, expressionless face without having to recall how stupid it looked once animated. Brahms is no Charles Lee Ray, but he doesn't need to be. Out of all the overused tropes they employ, they went their own way on the one that truly mattered.

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