LAUREN COHAN IN THE BOY

year: 2016 photo: WALKING DEAD ingenue Lauren Cohan channelling Ellen Burstyn from THE EXORCIST

A couple things might seem familiar right from the start, but this wooden boy replacing one that was killed twenty years earlier... is definitely no Dummy. And also, not one string is needed, nor a ventriloquist. Just a genuinely spooky expression aimed at a lovely American played by Lauren Cohan, whose Maggie is the Juliet of THE WALKING DEAD, and now she's on the big screen with another thing to be scared about albeit far more subtle... at least initially.

A Boy Named Brahms

Cohan's Greta Evans, with a unique job to babysit a doll, is obviously hiding from her own past, so it's no wonder why she takes and keeps such a ludicrous gig in the first place. But as we all know by now, people stick around during the craziest times when it comes to the horror genre.

And after a while, Greta actually somewhat connects with The Boy, whose name, Brahms, would have been a much creepier title. And she's not entirely alone; hitting it off with a charming Brit who sporadically delivers food to the house... The Delivery (Young) Man.

But during the mounting third act, her big abusive boyfriend, looking like a member of a Metallica cover band, shows up, completely out of the blue, and thanks to him the ball gets rolling as the inevitably lethal doll (why put him in a movie if he isn't?) shows his true colors as the man behind The Boy, a monstrosity not unlike, say, Freddy, Michael or Jason, unveils the kind of wrath that should/could have occurred much sooner so the suspense and palpable danger aren't so spread apart, which made THE BOY an uneven and, in particular scenes before the tables turn, a downright boring melodrama.

RATING: **