This has been incessantly trailed for over two months, and it is fair to say that the film is very different to that suggested by those trailers.
Greta (Lauren Cohan), a young American woman keen to get away from her old life with an abusive partner travels to England for a job as a nanny in a remote country house. She is required because the child’s parents are going on holiday. However, when she gets there she finds that the child, Brahms, is in fact a doll of a young boy. Left with strict instructions how to treat the boy, she initially ignores them, but then creepy things start to happen.
Apart from two unnecessary ‘it was only a dream moments’, for the most part the director William Brent Bell relies on the natural creepiness of the doll, and the old ramshackle house to keep the tension bubbling along which I think is a very good thing. It also enables some character development at a level you don’t normally get in horror films, and it is helped by having two likeable leads – Cohan and the local delivery man, Malcolm, charmingly played by Rupert Evans.
The film does back itself into a position where the twist that comes late on in the film is required, but the tension is lessened from that point forward. The film turns from a spooky supernatural story to a standard slasher flick with an almost indestructible monster, and the obligatory scene setting up the possibility of a sequel.
Still, another decent horror film, maintaining the run of above average movies in that genre this year.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10