Name: Brahms: The Boy 2
Director: William Brent Bell
Released: 2020-02-21T17:49:00

The original The Boy movie was released in 2016 to mixed reviews. I liked it. I thought the casting was excellent and the story gave me more than I’d bargained for. For the sequel, The Boy: Brahms II, the release in February 2020 was hindered and eventually delayed by a certain pandemic. Brahms, The Boy 2 cast includes Katie Holmes as Liza, a loving mom to son Jules (Christopher Convery.) She’s also the wife to Sean (Owain Yeoman.) Sean is the dad and is mostly utilized as someone who stands next to her from time to time and nods. The film initially takes off with some exciting and tense action between Liza, Jules, and some hard-hitting home invasion types.

It’s from this single event that Jules is rendered mute. As a cure-all, they move away from the city and into the Heelshire mansion. Nothing like a breath of fresh air and no one around for miles to get your traumatized kid to snap out of it.

The Boy Brahms II is a Standalone Film

Brahms II movie was never intended as a sequel, instead, this film is labeled as a stand-alone film. What you end up with though, is a rather rough but well-polished movie. Production levels are great. The score is utilized to make its intention clear there is something creepy going on but somehow it belies the fact, that it’s less than that.

The story is too simple, too contrived of happenstance to really pack a punch. The scary doll which was skillfully used in the first film has less personality even though it actually should have more. With a runtime of only 86-minutes, the time drags on. It’s especially painful when filmmakers decide to have the protagonists running about yelling. As if they’re not aware this overused ploy is not a willful annoyance to most horror film lovers. A good portion of time is spent watching Liza trying to find Jules on multiple occasions while making as much noise as humanly possible.

The narrative purposely goes through the Brahms rule book breaking them decisively one by one. Liza wants us to believe the mounting evidence Brahms is more than a doll in The Boy II and can be waved away because she’s convinced herself she too is still traumatized. There is often a glass of wine in her hand as though to say, nothing spooky requires acknowledgment because obviously, Liza has a drinking problem.

Liza is Drunk

The props used within this tiny length of time are flimsy and lazy. One minute Liza is a helicopter parent who never leaves her son alone. And the next, she’s unable to ascertain that Jules is not having a pleasant time outside with his cousins playing croquet. Liza conveniently has her back to a window where Jude and his two cousins are. The camera alternates between the kids and her conversation with her sister-in-law. Jude’s older cousin is tormenting him as Brahms sits on a swing watching over the events more intently than his usually attentive mother. Blind man Billy could see things are escalating between the kids. But Liza has a glass of wine in her hand, so what would she know anyway? What should be a tense and hair-raising scene, gets undermined by the all too obvious setup.

Who Plays Brahms in the Boy 2?

Many fans of the original film picked up early on that The Boy II did not star James Russell who played Brahms Heelshire. The Boy 2 has no such accreditation in its cast list. As I mentioned earlier, this Brahms should have more personality than the original inanimate life-sized doll. Because Brahms could be related to Annabelle and we all know how much mischief she got up to. A little bit of backstory is given about Brahms’s history as a malicious spirit. However, by the time it’s rolled out, between bouts of sketchy CGI it fails to outrun the PG-13 horror rating.

I give Brahms The Boy 2

2.5 furnace congregations out of 5