I almost laugh every time “Brahms: The Boy II” (2020) focuses in on the facial expression of the titular doll that’s supposedly terrorizing English-American couple Owain Yeoman and Katie Holmes. He starts with pranks and builds up to something more sinister.
It’s totally clichéd yet bizarrely compelling as we can’t help but think of him as real. I think Brahms and Annabelle from the “Conjuring”-verse would make a cute couple.
An amusing time
This sequel from the same team that made “The Boy” – one of my favorite horror films of 2016 – is a step down (for reasons I’ll get to after the spoiler alert). But at its most basic level, it’s amusing, and I think writer Stacey Menear and director William Brent Bell are aware of this.
“Brahms: The Boy II” (2020)
Director: William Brent Bell
Writer: Stacey Menear
Stars: Katie Holmes, Christopher Convery, Owain Yeoman
“Brahms” is not a comedy, but it’s perpetually funny that a single-expression, three-quarters-life-size doll is kinda scary.
Holmes’ Liza is a good audience surrogate. She looks at Brahms with suspicion when her husband and kid are around, looks deeply into his eyes when they aren’t, and researches his serial number on the internet.
The film isn’t deeply terrifying, but it is fingernail-biting intense in that mild way where you know you’re being manipulated but you go with it anyway.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
No match for the original
Bell’s scene stagings are professionally effective, with set-ups (a sharp, broken croquet mallet sticking out of the ground) leading to punchlines (someone falling on the pointy shard).
But “Brahms” is ultimately so on-the-ceramic-nose as one of those evil-through-the-generations yarns I’m surprised his serial number isn’t 666.
The first “The Boy” is great because it peppers in a few openly ridiculous things. Notably house-sitter Lauren Cohan is asked to take care of the doll, armed with a specific checklist. The sequel is hurt by being too straightforward.
After watching the rote conclusion, I was surprised to find out this comes from the original’s writer and director. They undercut what made “The Boy” creepy: It suggested the supernatural but then revealed a killer was in the walls all along, moving the doll around.
“Brahms” is set in the guest house a brisk walk away from “The Boy’s” mansion, so we get to go back into those walls. This little tour is a reminder of what made that film so good.
Scoring some points
The guest house lacks hidden passages, but there are mildly intriguing possibilities to explain Brahms’ supposed activities. Maybe Liza is so unhinged from the home invasion that brings them to this country house that she’s imagining things.
Maybe the kid (Christopher Convery, no doubt cast because he resembles Brahms) is a skilled prankster. Maybe the suspicious groundskeeper (Ralph Ineson) is behind it. Or maybe Brahms is somehow alive.
Menear and Bell settle on what I found to be an obvious answer. That makes “Brahms” silly rather than scary, even though the traditional horror trappings are all present and accounted for.
But until that ending, I have to admit the craftsmanship kept my attention. The score by Brett Detar is worth an isolated shout-out. It’s wonderfully intense and creepy — and notably too good for “Brahms: The Boy II.”