The Boy

As I saw the trailer for "The Boy", heavily played in late 2015, I was intrigued. But all was forgotten after the indie horror film from director William Brent Bell ("The Devil Inside") vanished from theaters after a brief but semi-successful run. Now fans and other curious folks, can get a second look at the rare horror genre film known as "doll terror."

"The Boy" (not to be confused with another recent Blu-ray horror release of the same name) is played very straight, even though its main character happens to be Brahms the doll. Our heroine Greta (Lauren Cohan, "The Walking Dead") goes to England to get away from her abusive husband. She takes a job as a nanny at a spooky but welcoming castle; little does she know that the "child" she's taking care of is a life-sized boy-doll.

Soon, Greta believes Brahms is actually alive and, thanks to flashbacks in the film, the audience learns what's really going on in "The Boy."

It's nice to see Cohan not covered in muck and grime, like she is so often on "The Walking Dead," although in later scenes in "The Boy" she does get dirtied up.

I liked "The Boy," very much so, actually. I enjoyed its mysteriousness and somber mood. What I didn't like as much is the lack of special features on Universal's rare, bare-bones Blu-ray. Not even the film's trailer gets included, and for a film that was shot for $10 million and made around $35 million, the lack of bonus material is perplexing.

"The Boy" is deemed a rental for sure, and Universal gets the guilty verdict on this release.

"The Boy"
Blu-ray
$34.98
www.uphe.com