Dan Piersma, Assistant Sports Editor

Some of the most notorious and scary films to date have involved dolls in some way, including movies like “Annabelle” or “Chucky.”  They can be movies that will leave a lasting impression and maybe even scar you for life, however, “Brahms: The Boy II” was not this type of doll movie. 

Set in modern day times, this was a sequel to “The Boy” which was released in January 2016 but the movies were almost completely different. 

Sure, they were based in the same area and featured the same doll from the first one, but it just wasn’t the same. With the first movie you had the doll being controlled by someone running through the walls to make it move and in the sequel the doll was somehow now possessed. 

This is where the story was lacking right from the beginning; we never got an answer to why the doll was now possessed and why it was still around. You just kind of had to accept what was happening and try to make sense of it.

A family needing some time away from city life decides to get a “vacation home” out in the country for a little while. When the young son is walking through the woods he discovers the doll’s hand sticking through the ground as the previous person who stayed there buried it to try and completely rid of the terror it caused. The young son unburied the doll and began carrying it with him everywhere at all times. When the parents began to break certain rules that the doll had in place, certain things began to happen and go downhill. 

Now, I’m not a horror fan but I saw the first so I felt obligated to see the second one. I went into it thinking that it was going to give at least a few jump scares throughout and I was disappointed to find out there wasn’t. 

Myself and the three people I went with just sat there with an almost blank stare from start to finish. It was a movie where you sat there waiting for something to happen and nothing really ever did. It never had that one defining moment where the movie turned around and became a true action and horror movie. 

I still won’t spoil the full movie but I will say that this movie had no deaths other than a dog, who died off screen. Right off the bat this raises questions because who makes a horror movie with no deaths? It probably doesn’t happen very much. 

It also didn’t help that this movie was completely different from the first one, as I mentioned before. There was no real narrative to this and it just didn’t really make sense in a lot of spots. The only ties or references to the first one was when the mom was looking up information about the house she was staying at and found old news stories about previous incidents that resulted in death at the home. 

The best part of the movie may have been the very last scene that hinted at a third movie, because for some reason, it gave hope that maybe there will actually be a good story and narrative to help this lackluster second film.

It was a good first movie that was followed by a second movie that just didn’t need to happen or was made completely wrong. By the end of the day, it almost felt like they could have impacted the whole movie and made it into a set up trailer for the third movie. 

It’s definitely not a movie I would recommend spending an hour and a half of your time in the theaters watching, simply just not worth the money and would be quite disappointing for a true horror/mystery fan.