10/7/17 – day seven of thirty-one days of horror!
This scary doll movie – a proud horror subgenre that
deserves more celebration than it gets – arrived last year with little fanfare,
so imagine my surprise to find it’s actually a fun little horror movie! I don’t
want to get too into spoilers because there are some surprising twists, but the
central conceit is that a young American woman (Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan)
lands what she thinks is a nanny job for wealthy British couple, only to find
that she is actually being hired to care for a life-size doll made in the short
pants-wearing image of their dead son. Naturally things around the Olde English
manor start getting spooky, and our plucky heroine begins to think that either
the doll is haunted or she is going insane – or maybe both. Unlike the
over-designed, underused, glory-hogging Annabelle, the evil doll here – named
Brahms after his once living namesake – is creepy without trying too hard and
actually serves a real function in the plot. It’s rare that a new horror film pulls
the rug out from under me but this one managed to, so I say give the lil’ tyke
some love this Halloween. Let’s hear it for the Boy!
