5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After a family moves into the Heelshire Mansion, their young son soon makes friends with a life-like doll called Brahms.
Starring: Katie Holmes, Ralph Ineson, Owain Yeoman, Anjali Jay, Oliver RiceHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 11% |
Mystery | 7% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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...
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 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 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.
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.
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