The Boy (Movie Review)

Boys will be boys, and in the case of The Boy from director Craig Macneill sometimes they will try to suffocate you in your sleep. Raising kids is tough work and parents have enough on their plates trying to make the lives of their kids meaningful, but what do you do when you're little one is slowly turning into a dead-eyed sociopath?

Macneill is far less interested in answering that particular question and more inclined to just hold your head in a vice grip forcing you to watch as the darkness envelopes young Ted (Jared Breeze). At 9 years old all the young man has known is life helping his father, John (David Morse) oversee a rundown motel out in the middle of nowhere. However, all Ted does is dream about life outside of his isolation and scoops roadkill up to collect money from his dad- money he's saving to buy a Greyhound ticket so he can abscond to Florida with his mother. However, there's a deep dark fascination with death growing inside of young Ted and the appearance of a wayward stranger, William (Rainn Wilson), only serves as the spark that ignites the fire in his heart. 

Unsurprisingly, The Boy is not a "How-To" guide to raising a potential serial killer and more akin to "What To Expect When Expecting A Sociopath." The film is very much a character study about the effects of loneliness and extreme isolation on a growing child. Without regular contact to children his own age, a traditional education, and a revolving door of strangers Ted is slowly becoming desensitized to the world around him. For a time there are glimpses of his psyche yearning for something normal, but inside his mind is detaching from the outside world. The one "stable" relationship Ted has is with his father, but he has resentments of his own regarding the life he's chosen and struggles to connect with his son and spends most of his nights drinking. 

Young Jared Breeze is pretty incredible as Ted. He conveys all the innocence of a child his age, but with a darkness behind his eyes that comes across extremely chilling. The film's relentlessly bleak tone sets the audience up for a story that, before long, becomes perfectly clear will not have a happy ending. Breeze himself is surrounded by film veterans Morse and Rainn who spar off Breeze's performance perfectly. 

While there's nothing obvious in The Boy that sticks out as lacking or mediocre, it perhaps goes on for a smidge too long. The bloated runtime is clearly there to help the audience share in Ted's desperate loneliness and yearning for life outside of the motel. Emotionally, the film is a tug-of-war between sympathy of Ted's situation and outright dread and when all is said and done the film leaves you feeling empty and depressed. If that was Macneill's goal he knocked it out of the park, but it's tough to recommend others jump along for the tumble into Ted's dead-eyed abyss.