THE BOY

Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans

Writer: Stacey Menear

Director: William Brent Bell

Fleeting from an abusive relationship, American nanny Greta (Cohan) arrives in England to take on a job at a predictably grand and - horror flick trope ahoy! - predictably secluded house in the country. Less predictable (well, if you haven't seen the trailer or read a synopsis of the plot) is that Brahms, the child Greta has been tasked with looking after, is a life-sized doll which has come to represent the son of her employers as the result of a past tragedy. Left with a set of rules as to the way she must take care of Brahms, Greta immediately dispenses with those rules. Of course, that's exactly when weird and spooky things begin to happen...

Okay, it's not a game-changer in terms of horror movies but I was pleasantly surprised and entertained by The Boy. Yes, it does have a couple of jump scares that don't even turn out to be real (it's those pesky dream sequences again) but in general director William Brent Bell pays a lot of attention to the eerie atmosphere of the piece rather than just load up the movie with those haunted house "BOO!" moments of which I tire more and more quickly these days. Not that you won't be waiting for things to leap out whenever our heroine is wandering yet another dimly-lit corridor, mind.

To be honest I don't mind jump scares so much when they're woven into a reasonably intriguing story and there's a pretty decent little thriller at the heart of this as Greta attempts to make sense of the supernatural events taking place with the help of local grocery shopkeeper Malcolm (Evans). The Walking Dead's Cohan makes for an engaging heroine, both afraid of and fascinated by the mystery in which she's found herself and her amateur sleuthing keeps the plot ticking along nicely. The whole thing is paced well and drip feeds the viewer with just enough clues to keep the guessing game interesting until the ultimate reveal which, although easy to pick holes in if you so wish, works within the confines of the plot and makes for at least one winningly creepy moment.

Considering one of William Brent Bell's previous movies, The Devil Inside, seemed to delight in winding up the unnecessary, shrieking hysteria to 11 far too often for my liking, The Boy is much more measured and resists the temptation to over-egg the pudding. For many people the very sight of a doll sitting in a chair and looking in their direction is scary enough and the film-makers are canny enough to understand this. If you're an out-and-out gorehound you'll need to look elsewhere for your fix but if you prefer not to swim in blood and guts this should fit the bill quite nicely.