Best Brahms Forever: Katie Holmes almost lifts "Brahms: The Boy II" off the humdrum ground

Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

86 min.

Release Date: February 21, 2020 (Wide)

Of all the sequels to be made, “Brahms: The Boy II” probably wasn’t high on anyone’s wish list. At best, 2016’s “The Boy” was a sufficiently moody yet overall tepid horror film that ended up subverting expectations; it teased audiences that maybe the porcelain doll named Brahms could be possessed, until a big reveal that the real Brahms was, in fact, still alive as a disturbed twentysomething living inside the walls of the manor. Since the film made its modest budget back and then some, director William Brent Bell and Stacey Menear return with a rather unnecessary follow-up centered on the well-dressed porcelain nightmare and an unsuspecting family. For the trade-off of having a more-established actor who gives a solid performance and better production values, “Brahms: The Boy II” is respectably made if stale and humdrum.

After being traumatized by a random home invasion, wife and mother Liza (Katie Holmes) suffers from nightmares, and her son, Jude (Christopher Convery), who witnessed the attack, hasn’t spoken a word since, now communicating via a sketchpad and being homeschooled by his mother. Thinking it’s time to leave their London flat, Liza and husband Sean (Owain Yeoman) move to the countryside into a guest house. When the family goes for a walk, just through the woods is the ramshackle Heelshire Estate (from the original film), and in those woods, Jude digs up something out of the ground: the once-cracked doll named Brahms, who comes with a handy list of rules in his pocket. The parents are creeped out by Brahms—and understandably so—but convinced that the doll might work as a security blanket to get Jude back to his normal, talking self. Once Jude won’t go anywhere without Brahms, begins dressing like him, and draws disturbing images in his sketchpad, Liza has had enough, but she will have to get to the bottom of the power Brahms has over her son.

The problem with “Brahms: The Boy II” isn’t that it tries to retcon the mythology of its four-year-old predecessor, the problem is that it tips its hand too early and never achieves a truly frightening sense of dread. Behind Liza’s back, the camera actually captures Brahms supernaturally shifting his eyes on his own, so the audience is already way ahead of the characters. In reality, all of this would have been resolved had Liza and even Disbelieving Husband (aka Sean) made a quick, easy Google search on the house, and if not, they would have immediately burned the doll before anyone got hurt. Of course, then, there would be no movie. The new twist here is routine—and “twist” should be taken quite loosely—as if the filmmakers thought no one had ever seen a movie about a creepy doll before. 

Katie Holmes (2017’s “Logan Lucky”) tries her best with a performance deserving of a better film. As Liza, she brings a pragmatic intelligence, warmth, impatience, and an overall reality that almost—but not quite—validates the silliness of the proceedings, however, even the character’s trauma is treated solely as a narrative device and fodder for fake-out nightmare sequences that always feel like fake-out nightmare sequences. Christopher Convery (TV’s “Gotham”) and Owain Yeoman (2017’s “The Belko Experiment”), respectively, playing human boy Jude and father Sean are mostly locked into their archetypal roles, but they’re fine with what they need to do. Also, Ralph Ineson (2016’s “The Witch”) gets to add a little mystery as rifle-toting groundskeeper Joseph, until being on hand for exposition and to chew the scenery. Though it’s a pretty low bar (never forget the cheap malarkey that was "The Devil Inside"), this is William Brent Bell’s best-looking and best-directed film; otherwise, the film isn’t particularly scary, despite a tense tug-of-war turned deadly with a sharp croquet peg that actually goes there. “Brahms: The Boy II” gives audiences exactly what they thought they would be getting in “The Boy” and then, if anyone even still cares, makes the intimation that Brahms will return in one form or another.

Grade: C