BOY, THE

2.5 stars (out of 5)

Lauren Cohan took on director William Brent Bell’s seriously average horror quickie in between her commitments playing Maggie in TV’s The Walking Dead, and she’s actually pretty good here, bringing a spark to some dullish writing, appearing alone onscreen for long periods and just about making the twists work. And what a smile.

Greta Evans (LC) is an American living in England (actually Canada, but anyway) who’s in desperate need of money after escaping her homeland, and she’s driven to accept a live-in nanny gig for a married couple in one of those seemingly endless big scary houses in the countryside. When she arrives, she meets cute with delivery dude Malcolm (Rupert Evans) and is then introduced to the elderly Mr and Mrs Heelshire (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle, both very good at looking fearful).

She then meets their ‘son’, the supposedly 8 year old Brahms, and he turns out to be a ceramic doll with glassy staring eyes, and her reaction is first to laugh, then to feel pity for the old marrieds, and then puzzlement and boredom as she’s left for a fortnight to mind Brahms while the Heelshires go on holiday. When she doesn’t follow the rules (get Brahms out of bed at 7am, feed him boiled eggs for breakfast, play his favourite classical music), things in the house get weird and Malcolm turns up helpfully (and hornily) to assist, as Greta starts believing that Brahms is alive and can run around giggling in standard creepy-movie-doll fashion.

Brahms continues the long tradition of scary cinematic dollies that come to life or seem to come to life or whatever (think of Chucky in all those damn Child’s Play outings or Annabelle in her own self-titled The Conjuring spin-off), but mostly this is worth sitting through for Cohan’s pleasantly committed performance. And there’s some rude joke about her being the actual doll in this one, but it’s not going to be made here.