An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 2020’s Brahms: The Boy 2 the sequel to 2016’s The Boy. We also reviewed/explained 2016’s The Boy awhile back, you can read our article on it by clicking here.
Years after the events of 2016’s The Boy, a family moves into the guest house on the Heelshire estate and their son finds the seemingly supernatural doll, Brahms.
Is it Scary?
Brahms: The Boy 2 has a bunch of jump scares, none are really effective. There’s one tense scene throughout the entire movie but other than that the movie fails to build enough tension or atmosphere to make you scared. You won’t leave the movie scared of anything, except poorly made sequels.
Detailed Plot:
In case you haven’t watched The Boy or read our review/explanation of The Boy (which you can do by clicking here), here’s a quick recap of the first.
Greta (played by Lauren Cohan) gets a job in the United Kingdom at the Heelshire estate as a nanny. After meeting Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire, it’s revealed she was hired to take care of a doll named Brahms. We find out the doll represents the Heelshire’s 8-year-old son, Brahms, who died in a house fire decades earlier.
As the movie progresses Greta starts to experience supernatural phenomena surrounding the doll and comes to believe it’s alive.
In the final act of the movie, it’s revealed Brahms didn’t die in the fire and was actually hiding in the walls for several decades. The Heelshires faked Brahms’s death after he killed a girl in the nearby forest. It’s implied, since then, Brahms has killed several nannies throughout the decades if he didn’t like them.
After Greta’s arrival and feeling guilty for what they’ve done, Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire drown themselves in the lake. It turned out the doll wasn’t supernatural at all and what Greta thought was supernatural phenomena, was actually adult Brahms quickly emerging from the walls, moving the doll or other items, and then running back into the walls unseen.
At the end of the film, the doll is destroyed and a murderous Brahms exits the wall to kill Greta and others. Greta is able to escape after stabbing Brahms in the stomach with a screwdriver and the film ends with Brahms rebuilding the doll.
So now let’s move on to the sequel, weirdly titled Brahms: The Boy 2. This film will not follow up on Greta’s story and is considered a stand-alone sequel like a lot of horror movie sequels tend to do.
The film opens with one of our main characters Liza (played by Katie Holmes) arriving at home. As she disables her security alarm we see a child creepily watching her from behind the stairs. Too short for adult Brahms but maybe Brahms the doll is all grown up?
Turns out the child is Liza’s son Jude (played by Christopher Convery). He likes to play pranks and decided stalking his mom around the house and then jumping out would be a good one.
Liza gets a video call from her husband, Sean (played by Owain Yeoman) and he lets them know he’ll be working late again. This is horror movie talk for ‘some shit is about to go down’.
That night Liza puts Jude to bed and tries to give him a teddy bear but he claims he’s too old for it. Later she’s awoken by sounds from downstairs and when she goes to investigate she finds Jude out of his bed. Thinking he’s playing another prank, she heads downstairs and, this time, we see a man in all black standing behind the stairs like Jude was earlier.
In the kitchen, she sees Jude hiding behind the counter. She questions what he’s doing as she turns on the lights. Before Jude could warn her not to, she’s attacked by the man and we see there are actually two intruders.
Liza fights off one of the intruders, scratching his face, and then tackles the other while Jude activates the alarm. Since Liza is beating the shit out of one of the intruders, the other has to resort to cheating and strikes her in the back of the head with a trophy or lamp. She falls to the ground and the screen fades to white… did they just kill off Katie Holmes?!
We cut to five months later. Jude is with a therapist and we learn he no longer talks, communicating by writing on a notepad. We also see Liza is still alive but is in denial regarding her trauma despite having nightmares nightly and refusing to leave the house.
Sean suggests the family move out of the city for a fresh start but Liza simply tells him she’ll think about it. Everyone knows that means no.
That night, in a jump scare, she has another nightmare and terrifies Jude who was sleeping in their bed. Because of this, she agrees with Sean’s idea and we next see the family arriving at a new home out in the countryside.
Interestingly they’re not arriving at the manor from the first movie but the location looks to be around the same. They meet Pamela, the real estate agent (?), who tells them the house used to be a guest house to a much larger estate.
After she leaves, the family takes a walk around the nearby woods. There, they stumble upon the main house which is the manor from the first movie. Now abandoned, the manor was purchased by someone from the city with the intent of fixing it up but they eventually gave up that idea.
While Sean and Liza walk up to the manor to take a look, Jude hears some whispers coming from the woods and follows them. They lead him to a pile of dirt with a doll’s hand sticking out. Uncovering the dirt he finds, and immediately becomes attached to, the Brahms doll.
Sean and Liza finally realize Jude is missing and they find him with Brahms. After Jude nods that he wants to keep Brahms, they take him home and we see Liza clean him up. Although it looks like Brahms doesn’t have the cracks in his face from the first film, Liza does note he has been broken before. So someone did an amazing job putting him back together.
Later as the family goes to bed, Liza thinks she sees Brahms’ head move in the mirror but when looking back he hasn’t moved. Does this mean the adult Brahms followed them from the house and is now in their home or does he have hidden walls in the guest home as well?
The following morning Liza wakes up to the sounds of piano music. Investigating, she sees Jude playing the piano with Brahms, now in new clothes, sitting nearby. She asks if Jude dressed Brahms and when he shakes his head, she somehow doesn’t follow up with “Okay so who the hell dressed the creepy-ass doll?”
In-between shots of Liza talking to Jude and leaving to make breakfast, we see Brahms’s head has moved to face Jude.
At breakfast, Jude is writing in his notepad responding to someone else’s writing. It’s implied Brahms is another person writing to Jude through his notepad as the other handwriting reads “Take me where you found me.”
Wait a second… is the doll alive? Does it somehow contain the soul of Brahms now?
Anyway, Jude writes to his parents that the doll’s name is Brahms. When they ask how Jude came up with it, he writes that Brahms told him that was his name. Once again, everyone is just cool with this weird shit.
Later Jude asks Liza to go on a walk in the woods where Jude is led, by whispers, to a small coffin filled with Brahms’ clothes. As they look over the items they’re startled by a dog, Oz, and its owner, Joseph (played by Ralph Ineson).
Oz continues to growl at Brahms and Joseph apologizes for scaring them. He tells them he is the guard/gardener of the property and looks ominously at Brahms, which tells us he knows more than he’s letting on.
That night Liza tells Sean about the creepy shit from earlier and how she thinks they might need to get rid of Brahms. This turns into an argument when Sean tells her he believes she is hiding behind Jude’s trauma in order to not talk about her trauma. Liza storms away but while heading to their room hears Jude talking to someone.
Calling over Sean, the two enter the room and discover Jude was talking to Brahms. Although he still doesn’t talk to them, Jude writes in his notepad that Brahms doesn’t like the dog and asks them to close the door on their way out. Liza and Sean leave the room and are ecstatic that Jude is somewhat talking again. Liza then declares they can’t get rid of Brahms now.
Later as the three are asleep in bed, Liza is awoken by whispers. Following them to Jude’s room she sees Brahms sitting on the bed and, in a jump scare, she’s attacked by one of the men from the start of the movie.
This turns out to be a nightmare that Sean wakes her up from. Liza hears Jude panicking from his room and runs over finding him cowering in a corner. When she approaches him, and in another jump scare, Jude jumps towards her wearing a porcelain mask screaming “he’s mine!”
This turns out to be another nightmare because nothing says original as a nightmare in a nightmare sequence.
The following morning at breakfast, Jude has written down 10 rules that must be followed as dictated by Brahms and presents them to Liza and Sean. If one of them doesn’t include murder and ritual sacrifice then I don’t see why we can’t work something out.
That afternoon, as Liza is gathering clothes for laundry, she finds the teddy bear from earlier torn apart under Jude’s pillow. When she confronts him about it in the living room, Jude looks over to Brahms, insinuating he is the bear ripper. Thinking he’s lying, Liza sends him to his room and forces him to leave Brahms in the living room.
A little while later while Liza is reading in the study, the tv in the living room turns on to static. She rushes over, sees the remote next to Brahms, and no one else in the room. By the way, the study is literally right next to the living room and she has a clear eye line to Brahms.
Liza thinks that Jude somehow became Batman/Usain Bolt and was able to sneak into the living room, turn on the tv, and run back to his room in the moment it took her to look up from her book. She confronts Jude and punishes him for the rest of the day when he denies it was him.
Back in the study, Liza hears footsteps and when she looks up sees Brahms is missing. Assuming Jude grabbed him she goes towards his room, seeing his door close and lock as she arrives.
Jude appears behind her with a glass of water and she finally realizes someone else must have entered the room. When she opens the door, she sees Brahms sitting in a chair by himself.
For some reason the next scene does not involve her burning the doll. We cut to her in bed several hours later and Sean walks in with Jude who apologizes for scaring her. He also writes on his notepad that Brahms is sorry as well. I guess Sean and Liza think Jude was able to pull off some elaborate prank.
The following day as Jude is sitting with Brahms outside, Joseph walks over and asks if Jude has figured out a name for the doll. Jude writes ‘Brahms’ and Joseph is not surprised in the least.
Meanwhile, inside, Liza researches the manor house and reads the new owner is missing but is distracted when she sees Joseph outside with Jude. She runs outside, asking Joseph if he needs something and he tells her he’s looking for Oz, who has gone missing.
That night, while everyone else is asleep, Liza goes to Jude’s room and looks at Brahms’s foot for his mould number, a special identification number for antique dolls. After getting the number, 606H, she looks at Brahms’s face and his eyes go white. His mouth opens and hundreds of flies spill out. Surprisingly this is not a nightmare.
Liza screams, waking everyone up and it turns out it was a hallucination.
The next day Liza searches Brahms mould number, 606H, in an antique doll database and gets no results. For some reason, she doesn’t search H909 and just gives up. Entering Jude’s room she finds his notepad and flips through the pages.
Apparently Jude, or most likely Brahms, is a bit of an artist as she finds several violent drawings including one of a dead Oz. Also, there are some of Liza and Sean dead, having been stabbed by Jude wearing a mask but more importantly, is Oz the Dog dead?
When she turns around, Jude is standing in the doorway wearing clothes similar to Brahms and being creepy.
While the family has dinner, Jude writes on his notepad requesting a plate for Brahms but Liza denies him one. Sean tells the two that he has invited his brother and his family to visit but Jude reminds them of Brahms’ no-guest rule.
Sean says they’re family and not really guests while Liza tells Jude that Brahms doesn’t make the rules. Jude pushes away his food, refusing to eat but Liza tells him he’ll stay at the table until he does.
Sometime later, Liza returns to the dinner table and tries to reason with Jude telling him Brahms isn’t real. Instead, Jude writes in his notepad that she is breaking the rules and making Brahms mad. Angered, she leaves the room and tells Jude he’ll continue sitting there until he decides to eat.
Moments later there’s a loud crash and Liza runs back to the dining room finding the table flipped over.
Liza assumes Jude flipped the table but he writes in his notepad “I told you not to make him mad”. To be fair, no one expected Hulk-Brahms. Jude takes Brahms and leaves the room as Sean enters confused.
Liza shows Sean the notepad but the violent drawings from earlier are gone. He then questions whether Liza was the one who flipped the table since it would be too heavy for Jude. Sometimes I feel like horror movies must not exist in horror movies.
We cut to Joseph finding Oz dead in the woods. It feels like a random time to show us this but is there ever a good time to show a dead dog? …No.
The following day Liza and Sean enter Jude’s room but find it empty with the window open. They also find Jude’s notepad reading, ‘You should have followed the rules’. They immediately run into the woods looking for him.
Splitting up, Liza arrives at the manor and hears footsteps from the floor above. There, she finds an opening in the walls and enters the same passageways adult Brahms used in the first film. She eventually finds another opening to a room where Brahms is sitting on a bed.
Searching the room, she finds a picture of young human-Brahms with his mom at the piano with doll-Brahms next to them. This doesn’t really make sense since in the first movie it was established Brahms’ mom only got the doll after Brahms was living in the walls. I have a feeling this won’t be our only unexplained change in the lore though.
As Liza continues searching, a nearby door opens and Jude enters wearing the porcelain mask.
He slowly walks over to Liza who removes his mask. Jude then verbally apologizes for scaring her and since he finally spoke, Liza is cool with all the weird shit. In a jump scare, someone tries to break the door open and when they finally get in, it’s revealed to be Sean and Joseph.
As they leave, Liza asks Joseph about the house and he tells them the events of the first movie. The only new thing we learn is that adult Brahms died at some point. Joseph also reveals he found Oz gutted in the forest which raises a red flag since Liza saw the drawing in Jude’s notepad.
Later Sean’s brother Liam and his family consisting of his wife and two kids, Will and Sophie arrive. The movie makes it extremely clear that Will is a huge dick by having him call Jude ‘mental’ within the first few minutes of entering the home. Despite this, the parents send the children outside to play on their own.
Will immediately continues to harass Jude by calling him crazy. Jude recommends they play croquet which only leads to Will threatening to smash Brahms. He then breaks one of the wooden hoops leaving behind a sharp spike embedded in the ground.
I think we all see where this is going.
Because the movie wants to make it extremely clear that Will deserves what’s about to happen to him, he next starts picking on his sister. He grabs her hat, refusing to give it back even as Jude grabs the other end.
This scene is actually pretty tense and effective. You know what’s about to happen, Will is going to get impaled by the wooden spike, but you don’t know how serious it’s going to be. There’s great tension building as we see Liza and Will’s mom talk inside while we continuously cut back to the kids fighting outside.
Finally, as they fight for the hat, Jude looks over to Brahms and basically gives him the signal.
Jude lets go of the hat as Brahms’ head moves. Will falls back, slips on a ball, and lands on the wooden spike. The spike goes completely through Will but it’s through the shoulder. Movie logic has taught me that he’ll be perfectly fine.
We next see Liam and Sean loading a crying Will into the van and driving him to the hospital. See? Totally fine.
Later that night with only Liza and Jude in the home and Brahms sitting on the bench outside, Liza tries to get Jude to go to bed. Jude breaks down crying, telling her Brahms refuses to let him go and has threatened to kill Liza and Sean if they don’t let him live with Brahms. Liza assures him she won’t let that happen and puts Jude to sleep.
Back on her computer, Liza realizes the mould number from earlier, 606H, can be flipped upside down to H909… fucking duh! She tries this and unsurprisingly it works.
Finding a record of all the previous owners of the doll, she looks up the Heelshires and finds news articles corroborating what Joseph told them earlier. She then looks up the previous owners of the manor and finds out there have been murders going back over a century.
Each was committed by a child in the family who complained about a doll. In one of the articles from the 19th century, she finds the picture of a child-murderer holding the Brahms doll.
This is a complete retcon of the first movie. This movie is saying the doll has always lived in the manor and that it was always haunted. The first movie never insinuates that there is an evil entity living in the doll, making it very clear Mrs. Heelshire purchased it as a way to deal with the traumatic loss of the real Brahms. Every ‘evil or supernatural’ act done by doll Brahms was explained as actually having been done by the real adult Brahms who was living in the walls.
Also, what was the point of Liza getting the correct mould numbers when that just led her to research the Heelshire Manor?
They knew they were going to the estate, if they would have just researched the Heelshire manor or the estate before moving there they would have found all this information out days ago. She was also already in the process of researching the Heelshire mansion days ago, she didn’t need the mould number to do this.
After all these ‘revelations’ Liza looks out the window and sees Brahms is now missing. It was nice of him to wait until she found out the truth before making his move.
Meanwhile, while Liza was doing all that research, Sean was in the waiting room of the hospital where he meets a random guy who asks where he’s from. Conveniently this guy knows the history of the Heelshire manor and fills Sean in on the murders.
In one of the most contrived moments in recent times, he also reveals the new owner is Joseph, something no one else, including news articles Liza found earlier, knew. This causes Sean to realize Joseph has been lying to them from the beginning and he rushes out of the hospital.
Back at the house, Liza runs downstairs calling out for Jude, and sees the door open. Before she can check outside, Joseph appears and points his shotgun at her, revealing he’s working for Brahms. This is ridiculous.
A few minutes later Joseph has lit candles for some reason and tells Liza, Brahms will soon be one with Jude. He reveals that Brahms has the ability to reach out to damaged people and influence them.
Apparently, Joseph was also the one who put Brahms back together at the end of the first movie. This is despite the flashback and the ending of the first movie showing the person, who put him back together, was wearing real adult Brahms’ sweater.
Joseph also tells Liza that Brahms’ knew they were coming and told Joseph to bury him, knowing that Jude would find him. So I guess whatever entity that’s inside the doll can tell the future? Seriously, what the fuck.
After Joseph’s exposition dump, Liza grabs a candle and throws the hot wax on his face. She grabs his shotgun and slams it on his head, knocking him out. Liza then runs off to the manor and finds Jude in the basement.
Liza tries to reason with Jude before he can… actually, I have no idea what the hell Brahms is trying to make Jude do. Is this supposed to be a ritual? Is Jude supposed to sacrifice himself? How is Brahms supposed to be one with Jude? Is this an “Ade due Damballa” situation?
Anyway, Liza asks Jude to hold Brahms and he willingly gives her the doll. For some reason, instead of throwing him in the furnace behind Jude, she puts Brahms down on a bench nearby. When she turns around, Jude is now holding the shotgun and pointing it at her.
Clearly under Brahms’s influence, he tells Liza he’s going to live with Brahms now since she can’t protect him. Meanwhile, Sean has arrived and sneaks around the basement behind Brahms. Using a croquet mallet he smashes Brahms into pieces.
Smashing the doll releases Jude from Brahms’ influence causing him to drop the gun and mask. Joseph arrives and tells the family that Brahms will take his anger out on him now. Liza tries to tell him that Brahms can’t hurt him anymore but the doll sits up revealing itself to be some kind of monster? Demon?
Using some kind of telekinetic ability, Brahms lifts Joseph up in the air and causes the furnace to shoot out flames. Joseph dies while Liza and Sean are thrown across the room. Why didn’t Brahms kill Liza or Sean? Why did it kill Joseph when Joseph was working for him? Why didn’t it use its telekinetic abilities at any point earlier in the movie?
Liza and Sean look over and see Jude holding Brahms in front of the furnace. Again, what is its plan here? Doesn’t matter because Jude simply tosses Brahms into the furnace and shuts the door.
We cut to sometime later and the family is back in their original home. Apparently, they’re trauma free as we see Liza arriving home from work, something she couldn’t do after the attack at the start. We also see Jude as happy as ever and verbally communicating. I guess the best way to get over trauma is to deal with the supernatural?
That night Liza and Sean put Jude to bed but once they leave the room, Jude gets up revealing he kept the porcelain mask. The film ends with him looking into a mirror, telling Brahms goodnight, and stating he’ll be happy there as long as they learn the rules.
Review:
Brahms: The Boy 2 is not good and as a sequel, it’s pretty bad. The acting is iffy by the entire cast and there are too many glaringly obvious dumb character choices/decisions. Here are a few:
- Why didn’t Liza try different variations of Brahm’s mould number?
- Why didn’t Jude try warning his parents at any point prior to the last 20 minutes?
- Why didn’t Sean or Liza research the property before moving there or after finding out about the deaths?
- Why wouldn’t Liza throw Brahms in the furnace?
- Why did Brahms kill Joseph and not the family?
- Why would Joseph even help Brahms?
Sure, most movies have dumb character choices but a lot of times they’re not obvious until after it’s over and you’re thinking too hard about the movie. As for the characters, the movie sets up arcs for Liza and Jude but then it doesn’t complete it. They’re traumatized in the beginning and in the end, everything’s alright because they dealt with a more traumatic experience? There was never a moment where they overcame their trauma, it was just forgotten about.
Surprisingly the overall story is okay, it’s your typical haunted doll story, but it suffers because it’s a sequel. If this was its own haunted doll movie, with no connection to The Boy, it might have been an okay movie but because it tries so hard to be a sequel, it fails. You can see where and how the story could have been good.
But, I did like the twist it was trying to go for. The doll being responsible for multiple deaths for over a century, that’s interesting but for a The Boy sequel, it doesn’t make sense. Brahms’s real design under his porcelain mask was a highlight, it was gnarly in a good way. Again, it doesn’t make sense for the sequel since Brahms was also destroyed in the original and didn’t look like that.
If you’re a fan of 2016’s The Boy, I wouldn’t recommend this movie at all because it’s so different and it doesn’t make sense. If you’ve never seen The Boy or you didn’t like it then I would only recommend Brahms: The Boy 2 as a last resort.
Cast IMDB