Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another SXSW 2015 review, this time for the slow burn genre creeper THE BOY. The flick comes out of SpectreVision, Elijah Wood's production outfit that has also given us Cooties (which Lionsgate hasn't released yet, but played very well at Sundance 2014).
Tonally, you can't get more different. Cooties is a tongue-in-cheek apocalyptic zombie tale and The Boy is essentially watching the birth of a serial killer.
When you hear a movie is about a 9 year old sociopath you immediately get a picture in your mind of what the movie is going to be. Creepy kid, mysterious deaths, maybe an abusive parental figure. I was surprised to see that the main kid, Ted (Jared Breeze), wasn't played as Village of the Damned extra, but as just an average, lonely little boy. He's not exactly outgoing, but he's also not strangling rabbits for fun either.
The setting is a little Psycho-ish, with a tiny family owned motel providing the backdrop of the story we're seeing. The boy lives there with his father, played by the always dependable David Morse, but instead of a Norman/Norma relationship it's clear that while the father is kind of shitty at parenting, he's still trying his best. He's not some dickhead drunk that emotionally abuses his son, he's just a failure, sitting on a dying motel off the beaten track and realizing he has nothing to offer his son.
People come in and out of their lives, including a mysterious stranger with a secret, played very well and against type by Rainn Wilson. The fucked up quasi-friendship that develops between Rainn and the boy slowly kicks off the long haul to the legit creepy final act.
A lot of care was put into the production design, which I appreciate. It looks great, the sets aren't distractingly under-dressed like a lot of low budget fare, and a real storyteller's touch can be felt throughout without it feeling like director Craig William Macneill is showing off.
The whole thing is understated until it's not and that switch flip was one of my favorite moments of SXSW. I don't want to spoil much, but when you get to see it it's pretty much the moment the boy puts on his war paint and goes to work.
Performance-wise young Breeze leads the film quite fantastically. They purposefully went after a non-actor so they didn't get a Hollywood kid trained to act creepy and while that results in a few rough line deliveries the gambit paid off overall. Where Breeze really comes through is in the way he silently takes in his surroundings. You can see the wheels turning as he processes what's around him and starts making plans of his own.
All the adults in the movie are great, too, especially Rainn Wilson, but the movie lives or dies on us caring enough to follow young Breeze. He's so captivating to watch that the conceit fully clicks and we're left with something truly creepy, but in a real-world way that chills you deep down.
Really dug this one. Hope you guys get a chance to catch it sooner than later!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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