The Boy review: A very slow-burning drama/ horror that only gathers pace during the predictable final 15 minutes.
The Boy review
Embedded in the Cult section of this year’s BFI London Film Festival, the low-budget The Boy boasts a small, but impressive cast. Joining newcomer Jared Breeze as the title character is superb character actor David Morse playing the father role, and Rainn Wilson in perhaps of his darkest roles to date.
The story revolves around a father and son who run a remote desert motel which hardly gets any visitors. With no apparent schooling, friends or much interaction with his Dad, the young boy, Ted, spends his days gathering roadkill for which his father pays him 25 cents for every one. When the ‘road fodder’ become fewer and far between, Ted uses his imagination as to how to make more cash – by setting up bait in the middle of the road, teasing for bigger prey to come his way. When traveller William Colby (Wilson) hits a large deer on one dark, rainy night, he writes off his car, forcing him to spend a few nights in the struggling motel. Over the coming days, with new faces staying in the deserted motel, Ted’s fascination with death becomes even greater, leading to far more dangerous outcomes.
The Boy review
The Boy is perhaps one of the slowest-burning psychological horror movies we’ve seen for some time. In fact, it not even slow-burning, it’s barely smouldering. Director Craig William Macnell brings Craig McLeod Chapman‘s book to the screen in his feature directorial debut, with the author providing the screenplay adaptation himself. The film studies themes of obvious, terrible loneliness in the central character of Ted, who dreams of reuniting with his mother who has ‘moved to Florida’. The plot moves along at an extremely slow pace, and during its first act, hardly anything happens to move the story along at all. This is obviously the intention in order for us to feel the isolation and boredom that Ted experiences day-to-day, but it’s not ideal as one can not help but struggle to keep from looking at the watch so see how much more we have to endure. The Boy fails to deliver any tension, intrigue or further interest as things eventually do progress to the highly predictable climax.
Jared Breeze is one of the film’s redeeming plus points; a brilliant young actor that shows huge promise in a role which couldn’t have been easy to inhabit every day during filming, and David Morse is reliably solid as his depressed father. Wilson has grown a massive beard to play against-type as Colby, and is actually quite decent in the role, but there’s no sense of foreboding around the character as the plot finally unravels.
The Boy review
With obvious nods to Psycho but obviously not delivering anything near the heightened tension of that film, The Boy leaves the viewer feeling very unsatisfied. There was certainly room for so much more here, and while in places it is quite disturbing,and unsettling, it’ll leave you more angry than fulfilled.
The Boy review by Paul Heath, October 2015.
The Boy is playing at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival. It was released in August, 2015 in the US, but is currently awaiting a UK release.
