The Boy (2016)

Director: William Brent Bell
Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, James Russell...

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much, especially not a decent horror flick. Maybe that’s why this actually caught me off guard.
Let's be real though—it's definitely not a pure horror movie, but the story and the vibe were totally on point. It was a legit pleasant surprise.
The plot twist was pretty solid too, even if...

SPOILER ALERT

I actually saw a similar twist once in Supernatural, since the lead actress was in that show for a bit. Except instead of a doll, it was this little kid everyone thought had died. They spent the whole episode fighting a ghost, only to find out the kid was just hiding inside the walls of the house, just like the character in this movie.

The ending? Total garbage. Just a stupid, nonsensical way to wrap things up. If they hadn't completely butchered the finale, this would've been a solid movie. They had such a good rhythm going the whole time, then the ending just drags everything down. I'm not gonna spoil it because I don't feel like explaining the entire plot right now.🤣

Anyway, it's a perfectly fine watch if you're into creepy doll horror.😁

I have to admit, I found myself staring at the screen wondering what on earth was actually going on here,
only to repeatedly arrive at conclusions that felt perfectly logical—yet were entirely wrong
about what was really happening. Everything I suspected turned out to be completely
off the mark once the truth finally came to light.
Perhaps that’s just the charm of it, though—that predictable, almost cliché sense of dread you find in your average horror flick.

By the way, that idiot traveled all the way from the United States to England,
just to end up dead—his own damn fault, of course. If that isn't true love, I don't know what is. 😵

It was a favorite of mine too. I’d definitely recommend it to my niece if she’s around that 14 to 19 age range 😁
It’s got just enough creepiness without being totally over-the-top brutal.
Spoilers ahead!
To me, it felt obvious the second we saw the grave—you could just tell he was still alive. You just don't know where he's hiding or how he's moving that doll... though it was weird, remember when they were in the kitchen and she turned around and the doll had just moved? No sound at all. He had to have been right there physically to move it. How did he even pull that off? 🤔

Ashley Grant66,
I’ve stopped overanalyzing the logic of it all; he didn't actually move her, yet somehow, she ended up moved, so I suppose we just move on... It’s the tired, predictable tropes that really grate on my nerves lately—that whole "don't come over" routine where the guy inevitably shows up... once they mention him three times, you just know he's walking through the door... 🤦
It’s perfectly fine for a single viewing, I suppose.

The vibe is good, but honestly, I can't recall the ending, even though I watched it last month or something.

I know what the twist is, but kill me now, I just can't remember how it actually wrapped up.

Lawrence Edwards58 said:Personally, I find those tired tropes—like "oh, he's coming," "don't come," "please don't"—so irritating. Once they mentioned him three times, I knew exactly what was going to happen... 🤦
but for a single viewing, it’s fine enough.

I actually thought his arrival worked quite well, because it turned out
that they weren't just leading us on by making one obvious assumption.
Well, they were, but it wasn't *that* predictable.

THAT’S ABOUT ALL I REMEMBER [spoilers]

He hunts them down, she manages to escape—running straight for the gates,
if I recall correctly—but then she decides to turn back and feed him some story
about the rules, about how she came back specifically for him, and how she stayed, all
with the actual intention of killing him.

And she succeeds, in a way, though in a rather cheap twist, it turns out evil
can't be truly extinguished; he survives, and in that final
scene, we see him mending himself, creating this living porcelain boy mask from his own skin.
It sounds strangely poetic and meaningful while I'm typing it out,
but I know better—it's an illusion, and the movie is just a cliché that probably hopes
for a sequel it doesn't deserve. ☕

There really ought to be someone actually showing up at the door just to be murdered; if it hadn't been her, it could have been any neighbor, some retiree, a local priest, or whoever else was wandering by...

**And honestly, Kubrick dragged Hallorann halfway across the United States just so Nicholson could beat him senseless right at the hotel entrance.**

Caught a movie last night, and I guess it was actually pretty decent.

A solid, engaging film

The Boy 2 also weighed in... I'm a fan of both options, honestly.