Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

Brahms: The Boy II is the most recent example of a film that shouldn’t really exist. The first one was a decent horror film that was trying to cash in on the popularity of the Annabelle films but managed to make something that was good enough on it own merits. What it wasn’t was asking for a sequel however money will dictate whether something will have a sequel or not. The set up of the film is that after a home invasion where Liza gets attacked and the son Jude becomes mute, they move to the country into the guest house next door to the house used in the first film. Jude finds the boy and as the film then becomes a battle to separate Brahms from Jude.

Lets start with the positives. The performances are good. Katie Holmes does well as Liza. I haven’t actually seen her in a film since Batman Begins 15 years ago. I know she’s been in films since then but just not in one I have seen. I thought that once the story moved to the guest house, she got a bit better and stronger. Christopher Convery is also good as Jude. He to convey quite a lot of emotion without speaking and he manages it well. It’s difficult for child actors to be taken seriously but I have noticed recently that they are casting some good young actors like Roman Griffin Davis in Jojo Rabbit and Jackson Robert Scott in The Prodigy. I thought the best performance came from Ralph Ineson who is one of those actors who appears in everything. He plays Joseph who at first seems like he is just there to deliver exposition but its revealed that he is a sort of minder for Brahms. Its also well directed. I thought the some of the shots were quite nice and they made the house seem a nice if slightly creepy place to live. It does rely on some jump scares but there were a couple of red herrings where you think there is going to be a jump scare but there isn’t so I liked that.

The main problem that I have with this film is that it completely ruins all the good things from the first one. In the first film the doll is just a creepy doll and the truth of the boy being in the walls of the house was a nice twist. In this film they decide that the doll has a soul and chooses people that are damaged. When the dad smashes the head of Brahms, there is this weird alien looking thing which doesn’t make any sense to me.  Another thing was when it was revealed about Joseph’s true identity, I didn’t really care I just thought it was a fairly clichéd plot twist. Then there is the cousins that pop up for about five minutes that don’t really add anything to the story. Jude has a nephew who keeps calling him mental and when he get skewed by the broken crocket stick, I thought that he deserved it because he was being horrible. Also at the end there is a moment where Jude has the mask on and its clear they are going to make a third one which is even less necessary than this film. One final issue is that Liza finds a code on Brahms is foot and enters into a website and it doesn’t work. Most people would try and reverse the code but for narrative reasons, she doesn’t do this until the final act of the film. I don’t spot these things but even I wondered why she didn’t try it the other way. Had she done that then the film would have been over 40 minutes early. 

On its own merits, Brahms is fine. It looks nice and has good performances but if you question why it exists and compare it to the first Boy film then it completely falls apart. If it’s on Netflix or on TV then watch it but don’t seek it out because you aren’t really missing anything.

Fantasy Island (2020)

Fantasy Island or Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island as the BBFC Certificate has it sees a group of irritating people arrive on an island where their fantasy comes true and after a while things go wrong. The rules are stated at the beginning which is that people are only allowed one fantasy and it must be seen to the end. 

The problem isn’t that all the characters are extremely irritating even though they are. It took me five minutes to come to that conclusion and that I wanted them all to meet a grizzly death. The fact that three of them didn’t was a source of annoyance for me. The problem isnt that despite setting out the rules, the film decides to change the rules. Even though they were told that once a fantasy starts it can’t be stopped, Gwen gets to change her fantasy when it turns out to be too good. Another convenient change comes right at the end when Brax is told that the fantasy he went through was his brother’s and that he gets his fantasy which is to bring his brother back. 

The main problem is that its very dull. I was waiting for something to happen and for people to get killed off but the film doesn’t do that and instead takes a very long time to set up the main twist of the film that everyone bar Melanie who brings everyone to the island to exact revenge because they were involved in her boyfriends death. That would have been a much reveal had it happened 30-40 minutes earlier. At 1 hour and 49 minutes long, its way too long and suffers from a lot of padding. Even with multiple characters the film doesn’t seem to know how make it all work. All the performances are fairly wooden even when Melanie’s true identity is revealed I didn’t care because the film had long past point of me caring. Roarke spent 95% of the film playing the villain and refusing to disobey the island and then he gets one speech from Gwen and five seconds later he decides to change his mind. That’s the quickest character change I can recall. 

Fantasy Island is one of the worst movies I have seen for a while and the worst I have seen at the cinema for many years. Even Cats was more entertaining and the flaws with the film kept my attention. Fantasy Island is just a mess from start to finish and even Michael Rooker cant save this turkey.