The Boy

 

Movie, 2016, PG-13

 

Premise - A woman on the run from her abusive boyfriend takes a nanny job in an old, rich English countryside house. When she arrives, she realizes the boy she is babysitting is a doll meant to replace a young boy who had died years prior. The more time she spends alone in the house with the doll, the more she suspects the doll may be alive with the dead boy's spirit.

 

Review - This is a classically good horror film, ripe with jump scares, creepy dolls, beautifully gothic shots, an elegant yet ominous British house, and cool, dark lighting. I love it for holding all of those classic motifs. Yet, what I think what sits with me most about this film, is that the true horror lies in human beings and society - not in dark rooms or porcelain dolls. We are the villains, always.

 

If you turn to the history of British gothic horror, men have a legacy in writing about the paranormal - vampires, ghosts, goblins, you name it. When women writers came onto the scene, gothic horror turned to the genre of "domestic horror" - as in the horrors faced in real life. Think Jane Eyre with the creepy ghost turning out to be a mentally ill woman of color in the kept in the attic, or The Yellow Wallpaper where the ghosts in the wall turn out to be instigated by postpartum depression and psychosis (granted that story is American). That's because women knew best of all how horrifying life itself was already, without the addition of the paranormal. 

This is exactly what this movie about. With a female writer, and a female protagonist, we explore deep themes of gender-based violence, mental illness, and the feelings of domestic entrapment. The story starts with a woman trying desperately to move across the world to escape a physically abusive boyfriend, who killed her unborn baby in a physical altercation and continues to stalk her after her attempts to leave. Regardless of the content of the rest of the film, that's true horror right there. Every scene that involves her ex is horrendous because it's incredibly realistic, from the gaslighting, to the grabbing her, to the begging her to stay... My insides crawled because real women experience this.

 

We're distracted from this theme of gender-based violence while we pay attention to the creepy doll she has reluctantly agreed to babysit for money (after all, she needs to escape her ex by whatever means necessary). Turns out that, spoiler alert, the doll isn't possessed at all. The doll is being controlled by another violent man living in the walls, who then tries to kill her. The violence caused by people is more horrifying than anything a piece of porcelain can do. Men are scary. I left the film wondering if, Malcolm, the supposed "good guy" who comes to save her, is supposed to even be seen as "good either." After all, I see possessive qualities in him that may make him seem like her savior with an uncritical eye, but kinda creepy through the lens of patriarchy. I remember thinking to myself that the men in this film were creepier than the doll quite early on, and turns out my instincts led me in the correct direction of the themes of the film.

 

There is a lot of societal commentary that happens in this film that go beyond gender, mainly the strict expectations of social class and how this is incompatible with mental illness. British upper class is highly marked by formality, and anything that seems "odd" or "out of the ordinary" is something to be suppressed and kept out of sight. This is why the couple's son, who was showing signs of mental instability and violent tendencies, was locked in the walls after he set the place on fire, with the family pretending he had died. By raising the doll, the older couple showcases a sort of wishful thinking of what an ideal son would have been like - proper, well-behaved, and never causing trouble. This leaves little room to be human. The actual human Brahms was also left little room to be human, kept in the walls. His mental state and violent tendencies must have only worsened in that stifled environment, which is what happened quite often to the mentally institutionalized. It's a huge reason why I'm still against all kinds of institutionalization that still exist today. (81/100)

 

Quote - "Be good to him and he will be good to you"

 

What to watch for - The main actress is so beautiful it's mesmerizing - I know her as Vivian Volkoff in Chuck.

 

If you liked this film, I'd recommend Servant and The Haunting of Bly Manor!

 

Directed by William Brent Bell

Distributed by STX Entertainment