Metacritic reviews

Nearly free of gore, the film taps into the deep and always welcome vein of the opulently bizarre things that rich, emotionally stunted people get into when they’ve got too much money. Stacey Menear’s script is careful and clever about revealing what Brahms really is, for he’s certainly got a mind and will of his own.

At least, maybe The Boy can lead some novices to better, more original horror movies.

Stacey Menear's screenplay doesn't manage to sustain its clever premise, with the final act featuring a banal and formulaic revelation that unfortunately takes what had been a spooky haunted house tale into familiar slasher movie territory.

It still has enough scary moments to satisfy horror fans, but you’re left wondering whether it might have been more disturbing had it stayed on its original path.

The Boy, from director William Brent Bell, aims to set itself squarely in the fictional canon of "Chucky" and its brethren, but it ends up trying to do so much that it forgets to scare us.

Despite the assiduous grinding of plot mechanics by William Brent Bell (“The Devil Inside”) and scripter Stacey Menear, the movie never fully distracts its audience from the inherent silliness of its premise...and, as a result, is more likely to elicit laughs and rude remarks rather than screams and rooting interest.

The Boy’s overriding concern is telegraphed enough in advance that fans of Gothic suspense will almost certainly have guessed it 45 minutes in.

It’s more rote than revelatory, and the possibility of a sequel in the final shot plays more like a threat than a promise.

If only writer Stacey Menear and director William Brent Bell took the very real horrors of domestic abuse as seriously as they do the virtual horror of paranormal activity.

Is it a spoiler to refer to the coda of thriller The Boy as the clumsiest cop out in recent horror history?