You know that feeling when the opening credits start to play and you realize that the film is not going to be very good? It’s a rough feeling because it’s like the film made some massive mistakes in the future but the scenes haven’t happened yet so how do you know this? It’s just a gut feeling after years of watching the cinema and I’m afraid that the film could not surpass this. All of the characters act insanely illogical and it’s not even in an intentionally absurdist way. It’s just in a plain old poor writing way and that’s tough to beat.

The film starts off with Liza’s kid Jude being super annoying and pulling pranks to scare her. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t appreciate this but he doesn’t care. Well, one day the whole crying wolf thing doesn’t go well because an intruder actually is in the house and Jude does not give Liza any kind of heads up. She is defeated by the attackers and now has some severe PTSD. They move in with her husband to a more remote location in the forest area to hopefully help them move on. Jude has been unable to speak since the incident but unfortunately he finds a doll named Brahms underground. This doll may be more than meets the eye and Jude quickly starts to get corrupted.

So one of the many problems here is of course how weak willed Jude is. He immediately allows the doll to take him over without a fight which is pretty annoying. He just follows the doll’s evil rules without any kind of pushback. So much for freewill eh? Not cool and later on he even says that he tries to keep the doll happy so it won’t hurt the others. Wouldn’t a better idea be to tell the family so they can prepare themselves? I also don’t really buy this excuse since Jude was directly the one being crazy a lot of the time.

Jude also should have been talking to the parents instead of only talking to Brahms. So yeah I didn’t like the kid and he was pretty annoying and getting in the way the whole time. Meanwhile the parents take some of the blame as well. When Jude starts talking about how they can’t have any guests anymore, they should have been more serious about telling him that he doesn’t make the rules. They should have taken away the doll a whole lot sooner as well. One instance is when Jude makes some creepy drawings about his parents being murdered. That should have been game over for Brahms instead of not really doing anything about it.

Liza and Sean just didn’t take things seriously in time. None of it feels realistic in the slightest, how are you going to let this kid be so disrespectful and crazy the whole time? Lets ignore the supernatural angle because for now it doesn’t matter. Even if it was a normal doll, it’s clear that it is having a negative effect on Jude so it should be removed. That’s basically the end of the story there. If the doll returns after being buried and burned then that’s tough but at least they’d have given it a good try so I wouldn’t really have complaints there.

The side characters are also annoying like that random cousin who is cartoonishly mean. He basically shows up just to mess with Jude and start a fight. Things don’t go well for him but the whole thing felt pretty forced. then you have the gardener/neighbor Joseph who is rather shady the whole time. He looks worse as the film goes on but yeah it does seem like a security risk to have someone who can randomly walk onto your property at any time. You really can’t let your kid just be hanging out at that point.

The film also can’t avoid the easy pitfall of having animal violence. The dog gets murdered and you’re shaking your head the whole time. Another red flag that the parents ignore in part because they have no proof it was Jude and in part because they’re just not ready for this. The film brutally attacks your intelligence the whole time. The worst part of this is that by extension it makes Brahms look rather weak. For the most part he’s not pulling off any great feats the way that Chucky would. You feel like the parents could have buried him again and if they did it right away then they would be good. After all, that’s how they found him last time. Instead that’s just not what happens here.

As far as horror stinger endings go, I would also say it was on the weak side. It was more about checking off boxes than actually creating a really interesting cliffhanger which was disappointing. I don’t think there’s a whole lot you can do to make this a great series at this point. Films about evil dolls can work but you need to do something more with it. You can’t just have an evil doll and then call it a day. That’s not going to do anything, so you need a hook in addition to that. Maybe making Brahms able to turn his owner into a doll, transforming reality, etc.

Overall, Brahms: The Boy II is definitely a pretty bad film. It’s annoying the whole way through and the parents put up with way too much the whole time. It’s less scary and more so just tiring to see the characters constantly not knowing what to do. Brahms should be more active in a future film so that he is actually causing a lot of damage and talking. Having him just do things off screen at best isn’t good enough and possession is something you can do with any villain so it’s not much of a doll gimmick. I would definitely say to give this film a skip, there’s nothing that it’s really got to keep your attention.

Overall 2/10