From the same director William Brent Bell of its first installment, The Boy, comes its sequel–Brahms: The Boy II with its three lead characters–the family of three–Sean, Liza, and Jude (Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman, and Christopher Convery).
With the same writer–Stacey Menear of the first, the sequel tells a story about a young family who moves into a guest house on the estate. The couple’s young son soon makes an unsettling new friend, an eerily life-like doll, to whom he calls Brahms.
Finding the doll in the woods and after cleaning up, the doll sets the rules for Jude and his family to observe.
Like Greta Evans, a young American from Montana (from the previous film) who was hired as a nanny by the Heelshires, Jude has become the doll’s object of manipulations.
Creating fear for the audience is a little bit of a let-down in the film. It opts to shake and rattle the audience instead. Overall, it still has that horror feel in some scenes. Apart from the three leads, Ralph Ineson‘s character as Joseph plays an important part. He is the reason for the emergence of the doll named Brahms. Another character who makes sense of Jude’s condition is Anjali Jay as Dr. Lawrence.
Brahms is perhaps Annabelle‘s male doll version. Both dolls are haunted. The former is just less creepy than the latter.
Based on accounts by the Warrens, the paranormal investigator-author couple Ed and Lorraine—Annabelle is a haunted doll in the film The Conjuring (2013).
Brahms: The Boy II has its own merits as a horror film, but lacks that kind of feel from Asian horror flicks. Yes, it is as satisfying as the first one. For those who want to get some ‘scare’ over the weekend, this Bell film could be a good option there is.
