Review: Brahms: The Boy II

There is something really dispiriting in how sequels arrive and manage to undermine what came before. But it’s a worse feeling when these letdown sequels are made by the same people as before (Insidious: Chapter Two, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues).

Sometimes though, these sequels are equally as baffling as they are unfortunate, to the point you cannot fathom how the same minds ever made two such vastly different - and contradicting - pieces of work (see The Wicker Tree for the ultimate example of such). Unfortunately William Brent Bell’s Brahms: The Boy II is the latest instance of this. A sequel to his 2016 horror (in name only), this film is practically a reboot and is an utterly strange follow-up-cum-stand-alone that is as confused as it is disappointing.

The film starts off well enough, as it focuses on a family afflicted by a violent robbery that leaves mum Liza (Katie Holmes) shaken, father Sean (Owain Yeoman) feeling unsure what to do and their young son Jude (Christopher Convery) with trauma induced muteness. As the family decide to move out of the city for a while to heal, Jude discovers a partially buried antique porcelain doll in the woods, which initially seems to help him communicate but there may be more to “Brahms” than meets the eye...

Coming from someone who rather enjoyed the first film, this is such a confusing sequel and it’s little wonder it was released so quietly and took so long to arrive. This sequel seems to be made only for the purpose of making a sequel and worse still it needlessly retcons the original premise (and undermines its main nifty twist) just to make this "franchise" easier to continue.

But that's the craziest thing; its concept already could have been open to further films if they had just left it as it was. Instead Stacey Miner’s screenplay is so overwritten and the mythos is so needlessly overcomplicated, that it buries any flashes of promise along the way.

Indeed, there are some moments of atmosphere and watchable stretches and the cast do their best with the material but as the story mounts, less makes sense and more gaping plot holes begin to appear and are impossible to ignore. I mean, the main narrative dump disguised as a poor twist comes from some random drunk guy in a pub? No, seriously!

Towards the middle, you realise it is heading to a place it need not go - think the woefully inappropriate Jason Goes To Hell. Even as it threatens to go all out, once we arrive at the ridiculous finale, that is somehow both predictable and baffling, the point of the original has been missed entirely and the film ends in such an obvious and indifferent way.

Not sure we’ll be seeing Brahms again.

15
Director: William Brent Bell
Starring: Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman, Christopher Convery, Ralph Ineson
Release Date: Out Now (DVD/Blu-Ray, Sky Store)