Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Brahms: The Boy II Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 21, 2020

It's not as if 2016's The Boy set the Horror world on fire. Somewhat unique though it may have been, it ultimately amounted to little more than serviceable genre fodder. Here is the sequel, Brahms: The Boy II, Director William Brent Bell's film that does little to add to the legend to or do anything to build up the lore or the allure, piecing together a visually and aurally competent, if not still structurally trite, film built on a foundation of a fully irrelevant story made of recycled beats, predictable twists, dull writing, and flat characters. It's disappointing that Bell and Writer Stacey Menear, both of whom worked on the original film in the same roles, so rigidly and thoughtlessly plow through stale sequel shenanigans, struggling to come up with a more thought-provoking film, instead favoring empty scares and a flat cadence over something with a little more meat on its bones.

It beckons...

Two men clad in black enter a home and assault wife and mother Liza (Katie Holmes), leaving her severely injured and her son Jude (Christopher Convery) voluntarily mute and emotionally scarred. Liza’s husband Sean (Owain Yeoman) recommends the family move to the country and get a fresh start to heal the lingering psychological wounds. Soon after arriving at a secluded guest home not far from an old manor and within a beautiful woodlands, Jude finds a vintage porcelain doll buried in the ground. He and the doll bond. Its name is Brahms, it tells Jude. And it is with the doll that Jude begins to speak again. His psychiatrist believes that the doll is offering him an outlet for his emotions, but it quickly becomes apparent that something more sinister is in play, negatively impacting Jude’s behavior and putting the family in grave danger.

The movie offers little of intrinsic value. The story is haphazardly shaped from the start; the home invasion sequence seems crudely conceived at best, an acceptable but in no way dynamic propellant for two of the movie's main narrative threads: the family's move to the country and Jude's sudden refusal to speak. Had the trauma been rooted in something more tangible, something more directly related to the story the entire premise may have been more effective, but as it is it's little more than a simple framework from which to advance the tale. Unfortunately that defines most, if not all, of the movie. It's written in such a way as to connect scenes with no regard for creative spark or dramatic impact. The film flubs its way through its various checklist items, assembling towards ever predictable end goals for the scene, sequence, or the entire film. Plot twists are negated by transparency and character draw is put to rest from the start thanks to both listless writing and languid performances. There's not a good performance in the movie save, maybe, for the doll, who the filmmakers do ensure looks sufficiently creepy.

To its credit the film moves along at a brisk enough pace, and at well under 90 minutes sans credits it never overextends itself, even as it simply treks through tired genre cliché. Director William Brent Bell works up enough visual (and aural; the film features a well engineered soundtrack) finesse, even through trite scenarios and underwhelming locations, to keep things mildly interesting. But every time the audience feels like the movie might be headed in the right direction, it holds fast to the problems that even the best filmmakers could not mask, always returning to that insipid plot and lazy performances that quickly overwhelm any ephemeral bouts of goodness.

Brahms: The Boy II Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Brahms: The Boy II scares up a largely proficient 1080p transfer that only stumbles at its beginning and its end. The image begins inauspiciously, presenting a fairly significant amount of banding in a couple of densely foggy shots over the opening titles. Banding artifacts remain in a couple of positions throughout. Look at a shot featuring Liza walking down the stairs in the five-minute mark, right before she's assaulted for one of the more obvious examples. There are also some compression artifacts to be seen in a dark basement area location towards film's end, but through most of the movie the image holds fairly impressive and without these issues in abundance. Noise is also kept in check, somewhat of a surprise given the movie's fairly grim nature and abundance of darker scenes. Speaking of, the picture reveals rock solid black levels, particularly shadowy interiors and the dark attire Brahms and Jude wear through much of the movie. Skin tones are fine and colors are a little muted for effect but still find plenty of springy greens outside and some good warm accents inside. The palette never appears drastically altered one way or another. Details are pleasantly sharp. The movie was of course shot digitally and it offers well defined skin and clothing textures and plenty of intricate detail on the Brahms doll itself, particularly as it's first unearthed and covered in dirt but also later after it has been cleaned and fully returned to its natural state. Textures around the house are impressively sharp, too, and outside areas, notably the dense woods around the guest lodgings, reveal excellent definition to the natural elements. All in all this is a very good presentation with only a couple of bookend trouble spots.

Brahms: The Boy II Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Brahms: The Boy II composes a wonderful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack for its Blu-ray release. The stringy score is not at all stingy and is quite satisfying in total. As the film opens, it's not particularly aggressive, but the track finds its footing soon thereafter as Jude is drawn to the doll in the woods. As the film progresses, music grows more impressively stout and immersive, building to a climactic scene in which the stage becomes fully saturated in admittedly generic, but well presented, sound bliss. There is no lack in low end accompaniment (atmospheric score in chapter 12 is accompanied by some of the best subwoofer response one will find in a Horror film) and the rear channels get in on the action, too, carrying a fully balanced barrage of content. Surrounds additionally carry a good bit of spooky atmosphere as a series of voices float about in a few scenes, accompanied by more aggressive strings and a full stage envelopment in a symphony of sound fit for a movie of this style. Such sounds amplify in other parts of the movie. In chapter 10, a table is flipped over off-camera to wonderful rear channel integration and subwoofer support, making for one of the finest sound outputs in a movie with several practically reference moments on offer. Dialogue is well prioritized and presented with clarity and firm front-center placement. The movie may not be particularly memorable, but this soundtrack is nearly reason enough to give it a watch.

Brahms: The Boy II Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Brahms: The Boy II contains two bonus features. A DVD copy of the film and an iTunes digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover.

• Alternate Ending (1080p, 8:29).
• Deleted and Alternate Scenes (1080p, 9:54 total runtime): Included are Extended Nightmare, Brahms Watches TV, Mould Number, You Don't Understand, Jude's Drawings, and Doll Maker.

Brahms: The Boy II Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

To call Brahms: The Boy II anything but a trite effort would be to oversell it. Sure the film is competently put together, but it's also wholly unoriginal, trudging through blank-stare scares and recycled content amid no interesting atmosphere and through the eyes of no interesting characters. Universal's Blu-ray does deliver solid video and reference quality audio. Extras are limited to deleted and alternate scenes. Rent it.