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An intimate portrait of a 9-year-old sociopath's growing fascination with death.
Loneliness is a Disease
...And it brings out the worst in people. Take Ted and his dad for example. John (David Morse) is depressed and bit of a drinker, running a run down motel in a middle of nowhere, where guests arrive only by accident. Ted is a cute little blond boy, who caught an acute case of sociopathy, he's fascinated with death and very weird young man.
The running thread in this film is vast, unavoidable loneliness of the place and characters, not a healthy situation for a kid, who's getting bored and his anger for being stuck there builds slowly.
Creepy kids are often quite annoying, that's just how things are, and it's kinda hard to actually root for them but there are certain aspects of his life that can make us feel bad for Ted. At least occasionally, and for a brief moment. Mom's run away with some random guest, so he's left with the father, a decent guy but kind of lethargic and a loner himself. And the dream that he'll one day leave this miserable place and join his mother.
The pace is very slow which of course stresses the atmosphere, the actual misdeeds that we witness break away from the overall melancholy and outbursts of anger provide much needed dynamics. There are moments of tension which get slowly drowned by the tone of the film, building on leisurely drama rather than lifting the horror elements. But the finale is certainly fitting, as all we'd seen before it led to the big resolution.
This film is not particularly original, let me mention brilliant The Good Son, as a reference; but it follows the recent trend in cinema where slow burn drama dominates even straight genre work, making them seem more arty and meditative at the expense of action sequences. Making even US films like this one, seem more...I don't know...European in tone and style.
The film doesn't really dwell on the boy's nature, it doesn't raise obligatory nature vs nurture question as we are aware this boy's life is not happy. On the other hand it deals with father - son relationship a bit, making it very clear mom's absence and isolation has really affected the kid. But has it really, or did he just want to break away from boring routine where nothing happens unless you make it so yourself? "Oh well. We all do what we can not to think about life" I suppose.
The running thread in this film is vast, unavoidable loneliness of the place and characters, not a healthy situation for a kid, who's getting bored and his anger for being stuck there builds slowly.
Creepy kids are often quite annoying, that's just how things are, and it's kinda hard to actually root for them but there are certain aspects of his life that can make us feel bad for Ted. At least occasionally, and for a brief moment. Mom's run away with some random guest, so he's left with the father, a decent guy but kind of lethargic and a loner himself. And the dream that he'll one day leave this miserable place and join his mother.
The pace is very slow which of course stresses the atmosphere, the actual misdeeds that we witness break away from the overall melancholy and outbursts of anger provide much needed dynamics. There are moments of tension which get slowly drowned by the tone of the film, building on leisurely drama rather than lifting the horror elements. But the finale is certainly fitting, as all we'd seen before it led to the big resolution.
This film is not particularly original, let me mention brilliant The Good Son, as a reference; but it follows the recent trend in cinema where slow burn drama dominates even straight genre work, making them seem more arty and meditative at the expense of action sequences. Making even US films like this one, seem more...I don't know...European in tone and style.
The film doesn't really dwell on the boy's nature, it doesn't raise obligatory nature vs nurture question as we are aware this boy's life is not happy. On the other hand it deals with father - son relationship a bit, making it very clear mom's absence and isolation has really affected the kid. But has it really, or did he just want to break away from boring routine where nothing happens unless you make it so yourself? "Oh well. We all do what we can not to think about life" I suppose.
Craig Macneill’s desperate drama The Boy feels almost like an origin story about the next generation of Norman Bates, gradually succumbing to bursts of madness birthed out of complete boredom and total isolation. The focus on one deteriorating family running a dilapidated motel in Nowhere, U.S.A., is quietly effective even if the events in the film sometimes putter along just like the drab daily lives of the aging father and troubled kid at the center of the narrative.
Set in 1988, John (David Morse) is a second generation hotel manager trying to keep little Ted Henley (Jared Breeze) in line and stay focused on daily chores that grow even more monotonous because of their pointless routine. Ted lets out a scream at the beginning of The Boy when tasked with cleaning all the rooms (even though no one has slept in them), and it’s a moment that immediately tells you everything you need to know about this kid: He’s alone, he’s dangerously bored, and his endless day-to-day routine is really starting to get to him. Suddenly, a mysterious passerby (Rainn Wilson) crashes on the desolate highway of the motel, beginning a lengthy stay where he recovers and waits to get his car out of the shop.
Even with some new entertainment in the form of a customer, Ted begins to show signs of breaking, acting out violently where no one can see him. He has no real connection to the outside world and even though his father tries to be there for him, it’s the abandonment by his mother that eats away at him. Leaving the place more so than the boy, Ted also dreams of somehow getting out of his situation – and Rainn Wilson’s character might just offer a way out.
The Boy almost seems to relish in its do-nothing aesthetic, highlighting the decrepity of the motel against an incredible vista that used to be a tourist attraction. Now, it exists only as a reminder of something greater, mocking them with its quiet awesomeness. Produced by Elijah Wood’s Spectrevision, The Boy is supposed to be the beginning of a trilogy following the birth of a serial killer through three films. This is just the sort of concept that Spectrevision should attempt to fully realize, and once the other films come into play, The Boy as part of a whole should become a lot more interesting.
The slow start (and maybe a little of the middle) does pay off, however, with a conclusion that’s shocking even after seeing what Ted’s already been up to. He’s a bad apple; you just have to wait until the end to see how rotten he really is.
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