As parents, we often stress and worry over whether our children will be born disabled, or whether they’ll grow up happy and be successful. As parents, there are so many things to consider and be concerned about involving the well-being of our children, but it’s almost always centered on one key word… weakness. As parents, the worst thing we often imagine is that our children will be weak and unable to shoulder the burden of living in today’s world.
Perhaps weakness is not the true elephant in the room, or shall I say demon in the closet. What if… instead of raising a child that’s physically, mentally or emotionally weak, you found yourself raising a child that is physically and mentally strong, but emotionally void? What if you found yourself raising a sociopath? Now, what if you didn’t realize your child was a sociopath until it was already too late?
Directed by Craig William Macneill, who co-wrote with Clay McLeod Chapman, based loosely on his novel, THE BOY (2015) is one of the most frightening films a parent can see this year. No, this is not a horror film in the traditional sense, but is an unnerving psychological portrait of a boy named Ted Henley (played by Jared Breeze). Ted is a 9-year old boy living on a remote stretch of scenic tourist byway with his father John (played by David Morse) who owns and operates a fledgling little motel that’s been in the family for three generations. John hopes his son will one day carry the torch and keep the motel in the family, but the truth is that business is deafeningly slow.
Ted helps his father with running the motel, cleaning rooms and doing odds and ends. Most of the time, Ted does his work willingly, putting on the hat of good customer service, despite there rarely being any customers, but occasionally the truth creeps out when Ted is alone. From time to time, Ted sneaks peeks of a Florida post card, which is allegedly where his mother lives. In the mean time, he earns pocket change from John for collecting and disposing of roadkill off the byway in front of the motel, stashing away his coins in his makeshift “Florida or bust” coffee can bank.
Beginning with the roadkill, THE BOY carefully lays out Ted’s growing fascination with death. He is withdrawn, isolated and appears a shell of a boy, but inside that innocent, fleshy cocoon lies the makings of something decidedly evil. Ted is discovering his inner sociopath like other boys discover the hormonal allure of girls. Jared Breeze finds that perfect combination of harmless innocence and chilling creepiness that lies just beneath the surface. It’s like noticing the boy watching from a far, at first smiling and shrugging it off as any boy’s curiosity, then feeling the goosebumps and uneasiness associated with him watching, staring a bit too long, just before turning away and going about his business like nothing abnormal just occurred.
David Morse is very familiar, playing a version of his trademark melancholic troubled man with a heart of gold character, which works well in this role. John is distant, perhaps even neglectful to his son’s true nature and needs as he treads exceedingly deep water with an increasingly irrelevant small business deeper still beneath a mountain of debt. John is not purposefully neglectful or cruel. He acknowledges his son, communicates with his son, but is more on auto-pilot as a father than he is acutely aware of the pending peril his son represents, both to himself and others. Ted is a sociopath and John hasn’t the slightest clue.
THE BOY has some elements that I would call unintentional Easter eggs, if not purposefully inspired moments of homage, but that’s purely speculation. Macneill crafts a wonderful story that is somehow touching and terrifying all in one awkwardly pleasant character study. Notice the antlers worn by Ted in the poster. How often have we seen these play an integral role in modern stories of serial killers? Take the most recent examples of the TV series Hannibal and True Detective. Antlers are more than just horns, like that of the devil’s simple, minimalist presence, but are twisted, intertwined structures that branch out and shift directions, all wrapped up in something we see as beautiful and natural, but could kill in an instant if provoked.
The earthy, dusty tone and the subtle dusky lighting from cinematographer Noah Greenberg creates a warmth that is counter-intuitive to the story. This sets the viewer up, making the realization that Ted is not a sweet, innocent boy but rather a violent time bomb all the more compelling. German composer Hauschka supplements the film with an added level of hypnotizing misdirection with his original music, which carries the tone but leads viewers astray of the impending danger.
Sadly, Rainn Wilson turns out a somewhat disappointing performance as William Colby, a drifter who shacks up at the motel after hitting a deer, totaling his car. There is mystery to Colby, a secret and an inherent edge in his character that is all but missed with Wilson’s portrayal. Wilson attempts, even comes close to tapping into this on occasion, but never really hits his stride. This is unfortunate, as I like Rainn Wilson and want to see him continue to venture out and break the typecast so undeservedly put upon him by TV’s The Office.
THE BOY is a quaint, mostly quiet little film that serves as a nice, adolescent lead-in to other serial killer fare. Whether or not the film was influenced by PSYCHO, consider this the paternal alternative to the maternal Hitchcock classic. Void of any significant violence and gore, THE BOY resides almost entirely in the viewers’ psyche until the very end when we first see Ted’s inner sociopath emerge from his cocoon in a gloriously twisted fashion that remarkably still maintains a poetic, contemplative undertone and blurs the lines between right and wrong.
THE BOY opens in theaters nationwide and VOD on August 18th, 2015.
Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
