Brahms The Boy 2 is a horror film directed by William Brent Bell; it is a sequel to the 2016 film The Boy. Revolving around a family that, after a home invasion, moves to the British countryside to try and regain a sense of normality. However, they move in a stone’s throw away from The Hillshire Estate, which has one special prosocline resident that quickly becomes obsessed with the new family.
Please let this ‘franchise’ end here, there was no need for this film and my god there is certainly no need or reason for a third film. This film spends its hour and a half runtime tearing apart and ruining everything interesting from the first film and replacing it with haunted doll clichés. The first film earned my praise when they revealed that no nothing paranormal was going on, instead it was a killer in the walls.
However, this is how the second film continues that reveal, the Braham’s in the wall is just never mentioned again, and the doll is revealed to be evil or possessed or something. So, they go from a smart twist to a wannbe Annabelle film; what a waste. Rather than be a sequel that fits with the first, this feels incredibly at odds from the beginning.
The acting is nothing special either, Katie Holmes fills the Lauren Cohen role from the first film and is hugely outperformed by Cohen. The only difference between Holmes’ character and Cohen’s is that Holmes is a mother that has to worry about her disturbed kid. You would think this extra character dimension would allow for a more emotive performance, but no Holmes’s expression doesn’t change once over the course of the film, other than to occasionally shout, clearly this was just a paycheck role for her.
The kid is annoying right from the beginning and doesn’t get better, however, as I have said before I am not going to call out a child star for being bad at acting, it is low hanging fruit.
The only good thing about this film is the performance by Ralph Ineson who plays the groundskeeper who is secretly under the control of Brahms. Ineson seems to be the only person in this film that cares about giving a good performance and you can tell he is trying; he deserves better than this.
Overall, this film wasn’t as terribly bad as I thought it was going to be, that is as much praise as I can afford it. It is lazy, the cast other than Ineson don’t care, and it ruins the first film entirely.
Pros.
It is not terrible.
Ralph Ineson.
Cons,
It is lazy.
Clearly no one cares.
It ruins the first film.
2/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 