There are have been countless movies about evil children, from The Exorcist to Children of the Damned, and Corn and on and on. As a tired horror trope, it is rivaled only by the moves about evil dolls, from The Twilight Zone’s “Talking Tina” all the way to Annabelle, with half a hundred in between. Now director William Brent Bell (The Devil Inside and the excellent, underrated werewolf film Wer) and first-time screenwriter Stacy Menear have blended the two together into one truly creepy concent: The Boy.
Lauren Cohan, who clearly elevates this above the typical screeamer, is having a great year. She’s still killing it (so to speak) on The Walking Dead, and — as far as we know! — will still be fighting zombies for years to come. Now comes The Boy, an it’s just now been announced that she’ll be playing the role of Bruce Wayne’s mother, Martha, in the increasingly Dark Knight-ish Superman v Batman. The Boy opened pretty strongly — it covered its $10 million above-the-line costs in its first weekend, and will probably do $25-30 in its theatrical run. And it’s more than a bit of a break for Menear as well: though this is his first produced film, his script Mixtape appeared on the industry’s prestigious “Black List” of the best unproduced scripts of the year.
The Boy opened on January 22. It’s in theaters now.
