Brahms: The Boy II

The Boy played a pretty great prank on the public back in 2016. The trailers made a pitch for just another irritating possessed-doll movie. Then the actual plot literally busted out with a great twist that put The Boy up there with The Witch and The Invitation as the year’s best horror films. (It wasn’t a particularly great year for horror film titles.) Now the director and screenwriting team of William Brent Bell and Stacey Menear return to give us just another irritating possessed-doll movie. That includes an uninspired setting where Katie Holmes – stuck in a thankless role as a fragile housewife – moves her troubled family next door to the old Heelshire Mansion where an interesting plot once took place. Her kid isn’t speaking after a traumatic home invasion, but he’s soon back to normal after digging up the titular doll from the first movie. That’s followed by a bunch of stupid things happening in between plentiful false scares ranging from recurring nightmares to moronic hallucinations. Fans of the first film are left desperately hoping this might at least become an improvement on last year’s crappy Child’s Play reboot. Instead, this sequel becomes a nonsensical take on The Amityville Horror – with the added impact of massacring our fond memories of The Boy.

[PG-13]