The Boy Comes Out Today

by Mallory Ortberg · January 22, 2016

His name is BRAHMS. He is an EVIL DOLL. What time are you all coming over? We can drive to the theater together if you’re worried about parking.

From IMDB: “Originally titled “The Inhabitant” but was changed due to scenes cut out for the PG-13 rating to a better fitting title.”

Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 6.35.22 PM  

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


123 Comments

  2. Es_Petal +80

    You carry on, I’ll just go and get popcorn. No really, I’ll see you in there. No need to worry about saving a seat for me.

    2. happysadcat +5

      I am deeply interested in this theatre’s architecture, especially the part of the lobby where I can’t hear the movie. And these benches! So comfy.

  3. falcofield +18

    Did anyone ever see the 1988 movie, Pin? You’ll remember if you have.

    Because I have never, not once, forgotten Pin in all the years since I watched it. And this movie is uncomfortable neighbours with Leon/Pin.

    1. popelizbet +3

      My awesome horror nerd friend showed me this in college and I have never had the nerve to watch it again.

  4. threatqualitypress +89

    I actually really want to know what happens in this movie, but I will never watch a movie that has an evil doll in it, so.

    I guess all of you should go and see it and then come back and explain it to me.

      2. Roman +18

        In my old neighborhood there was a trend where the bigger houses would put a porcelain doll right against the third story window. Very reassuring to see at night.

    2. amanita +95

      We were “gifted” with some old dolls once and my spouse would constantly move them around the house when I wasn’t looking. Once, he changed the background of my phone to a close-up of their faces. He swears that last one wasn’t him but it HAD to have been. (These dolls are no longer in my home.)

          2. amanita +50

            There came a point when I became Very Very Angry, Because This is Not Funny, and that is the point the dolls no longer resided with us.

      2. falcofield +55

        A girlfriend of mine went back to a dude’s (family) house one night when they were both back in town (small town). The next morning, she woke up to realize she was in some bedroom literally WALL-TO-WALL with porcelain dolls. They belonged to his mom, IIRC, but she never ever spent another night at the house after that.

        2. meetapossum +19

          One of my good friends growing up had a spare room in the house that was FILLED with dolls on shelves around the room. Of course, this was the guest room I had to stay in when I slept over. I made them put the dolls in the closet every time.

          2. alicia +26

            The mom of a friend of mine restored old porcelain dolls as a hobby, so she had a room filled with doll parts in various stages of decay/repair. Fortunately I met him after he had moved far, far away from his mom’s house.

          3. Unreadaethel +6

            My neighbors were given a porcelain doll by…somebody, and it terrified both of the children, who were convinced it was evil. I was visiting them, and their dog freaked the fuck out when it was sitting on the couch ready for movie night. The doll no longer lives with them.

          5. Unreadaethel +4

            It was notable that his usual rat terrier “grab the thing and shake the fuck out of it” instincts didn’t kick in, but he growled with serious intent and raised hackles. The doll went to sit in the corner for the evening with a blanket over its head for the evening, and then went away forever after that. Well done, puppy.

        3. thebellewitch +71

          My aunt’s guest bedroom: those scary faceless wig/hat holders with Civil War era mourning veils on them. NOPE.

        4. darchildre +89

          My mother went through a period where she collected porcelain doll heads. Not the rest of the doll – just the heads. Sometimes also the hands. Occasionally, she bought whole dolls and removed the porcelain bits from the torsos.

          So there are doll heads all over the house. One of them is on the bookshelf in the living room. It is so old that the face is flaking off, so it looks like a decomposing child. Its name is Eva. Sometimes it wears a paper crown. Sometimes my mother makes it talk.

          There’s a stack of espresso cups in the kitchen that at one point had five doll hands reaching out from the top cup. No one used the cups during this time.

          Once, I took a handful of M&Ms from a bowl in the kitchen and came away with more hands than I started with. Yes, my mother had hidden a porcelain doll hand in a bowl of M&Ms for no apparent reason other than horror.

          My mother’s house does not have ghosts, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why not.

          3. tenyaluna +15

            Hahahaha, I read this to my husband and his response “are.. are you sure this isn’t my mother?” Although she doesn’t discriminate between porcelain and other doll materials – wood, plastic, whatever, it will festoon the house. She has some creepy giant harlequin doll she hides in various places when my husband goes back home, like under the bedcovers or peering from a barely open closet door.
            Recently she got our nephew into the act, sent us a picture of a doll hand he wedged onto Boba Fett’s body instead of a head. I love my strange in-law family.

          5. femaelstrom +4

            Was this before you turned 18? If yes, did you legally emancipate yourself? If not, WHY NOT.

          6. darchildre +17

            Much of this happened while I was in college.

            The thing you have to understand is that my mother has always been a delightfully creepy person. She used to drive very slowly next to me while I walked to the bus stop in elementary school, lean out the window, and say in a quiet insinuating voice, “Hello, little girl. Do you want a ride? Do you want some *candy*, little girl?”

            I guess what I’m saying is that the doll bits were new but not qualitatively different, and now I get to tell people that I come by my witchier tendencies honestly.

      3. Bunburying +59

        p. sure this is a generally accepted reason to take your spouse back to the manufacturer and demand a replacement model

      4. threatqualitypress +64

        When I was in college my roommates and I went to see the American remake of The Ring. We saw like a 10:00 showing and got home at midnight and we were all like, “uh yeah so, let’s watch David Letterman for a while.”

        Then when I went to bed, my so-called friends unplugged the cable from the back of the television and turned it on with the volume really loud so it was just blaring static and I flipped my shit.

        1. falcofield +15

          Similarly, I went to go see The Grudge with a group of friends in college. The other girls, scared shitless, lived together and after my dude friends had dropped them off, drove back and parked close to the house. Then they snuck up to their respective basement windows and scratched at the screens, meowing and making those hilariously scary sounds. I got to plead the fifth for not being involved, but still: funny and horrifying.

        2. helvetica547 +14

          I have almost the exact same story except I watched The Ring on the VHS and when it stopped, it for some reason wasn’t on any channel, so it was all static and everybody freaked the fuck out, naturally.
          I tried to watch a CinemaSins episode about it like last week, ten years after I saw the movie but noped out of it after 30 seconds because it was still too much.
          I am a big scaredy cat though.

          1. threatqualitypress +17

            I am generally a big fan of horror, but every once in a while something will really get to me, and The Ring was one of those things, and also things with evil dolls basically every time.

            (There’s a Twilight Zone Episode called The Dummy — about the worst kind of evil doll which is the Ventriloquist Dummy — that I still have nightmares just thinking about)

        3. alliana07 +21

          I watched The Ring when I was home alone; I think my sister was at a sleepover and my parents were out having a date together. So I put it on like an idiot, and right after I finished watching it, THE PHONE RANG.

          Suffice it to say I flipped the frak out on that telemarketer.

        4. Po Chen +10

          OH HELL NO — I saw Ringu at my university’s Medical School Film Society screening and then went home to bed, which was a trial, because at that time I was sleeping on the floor…and also at that time, my computer monitor (one of those huge CRT things) had busted so I had put it on the floor too. You know, where my head is when I sleep.

          It took like 3 days before I could get over the intense uncanny valley feeling I had crawling under my skin.

        5. Smitty +5

          Oh jeez The Ring. So I lived by myself at the time and my friend came over so we could go see it in the theater. I set my VHS to record
          Dawson’s Creek and was SO SCARED to freakin watch that tape when I got home and friend left. Also at the theater, as soon as the movie ended and it was super quiet, some dude yelled “Seven days, y’all!” and everyone laughed nervously. Many years later another “friend” climbed across a table at me the way the girl climbs out of the TV and I cried.

    3. octopoda +11

      There are spoilers / reveals deep in the AV Club comments for this movie’s review and also possibly on Wikipedia currently, if you really want to know.

    4. amanita +2

      COMING BACK TO SAY: This weekend, I got my hands on a Google Cardboard viewer and inaugurated it by trying to watch this: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sisters-virtual-r…

      TOO IMMERSIVE AND TOO SCARY. The instant one of the spooky dolls on the mantle disappeared while my literal back was turned, I almost threw my phone across the room and then deleted the app from my phone immediately.

  6. ughanothername +147

    I’m going to fully admit to victim blaming here but, but! Literally everything that happens to that woman in this movie is completely her fault because when she discovered she would be nannying for a doll she STAYED. What more do you need before you realize, “holy shit I’m living in a horror movie I should go now”???

    1. Ivans_Sister +66

      Right? I mean, even if you didn’t immediately jump to the “oh this doll is totally going to kill me”, do you really want to entwine yourself with people who are treating a doll as a real person? :: shivers ::

    2. Info_Antelope +89

      There’s at least three horror movies like this coming out around the same time. The Forest: don’t go in alone, don’t go off the trail, don’t stay after dark. The Door: Don’t open the door (even if you think your dead kid wants you to), and The Boy. My friends and I are calling it the Is It-Really-So-Hard-To-Follow-The-Damn-Rules Trilogy. We plan on seeing all of them.

      1. ughanothername +20

        Haha yeah. If you just listened you would be fine!!!! You have no one to blame but yourself!

        1. Info_Antelope +21

          They’re not even complicated or hard to follow directions! Most are things you should probably do (or not do) anyway!

      2. celery +40

        Seriously, what is it with people in horror movies/fairytales and not following rules? The malevolent evil forces that can destroy your life are kind enough to give you VERY SPECIFIC instructions; listen to them.

        1. EvaR +5

          This was always what scared me as a kid- that i had already BROKEN one of these rules without knowing it. Movies where that happens are the only ones that creep me out- Hellraiser, for example. There were a couple of those where no one told the person “Hey, leave the puzzle box alone because if you mess with it, Pinhead gets to torturerape you for all eternity.”

      3. damanoid +57

        Honestly though, isn’t this a basic theme (possibly THE Basic Theme) of horror movies, and their gory folktale narratives? Granted, they’re usually not quite so transparent as to literally hand the characters an itemized list. But ultimately, these movies are not about evil dolls or cursed forests or baneful portals; they’re about The Bad Shit That Happens When You Break The Rules.

      4. alder_tree +14

        You could almost include Crimson Peak–all the ghosts (SPOILER) are giving Edith good advice, even before she gets married, and she ignores them.

        1. Baroness Octothorpe +7

          But! They obfuscate their advice by calling the ancestral manor by its nickname, rather than just telling her not to marry Tom Hiddleston (which, granted, would have been a hard sell).

    3. Tarragoner +49

      “holy shit I’m living in a horror movie I should go now”???
      These are almost the exact words spoken by the voice in my head while hiding in the bathroom of my ex-boyfriend’s house the day before I fled.

        1. Tarragoner +6

          Hi! Thanks for asking. I’m doing very, very well. I love living alone. I started a dating a man a few weeks ago and he’s So Nice. in a completely normal, unassuming, natural way. It’s restoring me to sanity. We have actual conversations, he says “goodnight” when we’re texting, instead of just disappearing. I really, really, really cannot believe how sucked into crazytown I had become. The contrast makes it very clear now how much of a psychopath I was dealing with. Life is so damn weird.

          1. Unreadaethel +9

            The train to Crazytown is rarely well-marked, and all of the stops along the way are labeled upside-down.

  7. damanoid +115

    Brahms.

    Brahms, the doll.

    I’m sure he’s terrifying and all, I can see that they’ve gone to a lot of trouble over it, what with the eerie pallor and dressing him like a tiny Rod Serling and such. I just feel like, “Brahms” might be trying a bit too hard? He’s plenty creepy, there’s no need to gild the lily.

    I’ll tell you what’s really terrifying though: that house. That house is, like, made of ghosts. You could make a movie about an Osterizer blender named Harold, with a list of ominous ingredients it is forbidden to blend, and if you set it in that house it would be pure nightmare fuel.

    2. enidnotrebecca +15

      The Boy was filmed just up the road from me! Taking visiting friends there will never be the same. And yes, I’m totally going to see it.

  8. aqwaplop +70

    Evil doll media is 100% in the Nope Nuh-Uh No Way Also Nah Zone.
    My mom kept some of her mother’s old dolls in our guest room and OF COURSE they were all BONE-WHITE PORCELAIN and OF COURSE they all had PITCH BLACK EYE SOCKETS because their eyes apparently up and left one day. They all sat in little chairs at the other end of the room and stared holes into your life essence as you passed by. Worst room.

    3. walrathem +7

      My mother keeps my nana’s old doll in a tiny rocky chair and it used to freak me out until my mom pointed out that I’d never been worried about dolls-in-chairs before society told me to be afraid of dolls-in-chairs and that I hadn’t let that put me off clowns. So we’ve compromised on her keeping the doll in a place where it doesn’t cast looming shadows up the wall.

  11. perianwen +12

    I’m going to just sit down over here and wait for your review after you’ve seen it, Mallory!

  12. typewriterandgramophone +57

    I am totes chill with dolls, loved Rumer Godden novels and Tasha Tudor picture books, played with my dolls to an advanced age and am now saving them for the next generation. Should they rise against us, I will offer to comb out their hair and make them new socks and negotiate a truce.

    I’ll protect all of you from dolls if you will protect me from snakes and down escalators.

    2. dreamingintrees +5

      I will help you care for the dolls for sure. Mine are also being lovingly saved for the next generation

    3. popelizbet +10

      I can probably handle snakes but a down escalator ate my shoelace and, I firmly believe, wanted my foot too when I was like eight, so I’ll join you in that fear.

      1. typewriterandgramophone +6

        This is quite similar to what happened to me, even to the age- I fell and it was pulling my shirttail but my mother grabbed me and pushed me back up.

        And then there was an episode of “The X Files” that sealed the deal.

        And THEN every so often there will be a story on the news about people getting hurt or killed on escalators.

        Surprising more movies don’t make horror hay with them, really. They even have teeth!

        1. popelizbet +7

          The time it happened to me was after my dad jokingly told us they would eat our feet as a way to get us to hurry up in an airport, and when it happened my sister was rapidly disappearing into Christmas mall crowds. The shrieking was intense.

      2. tinypaperme +8

        Some off-balance carry-on luggage once knocked me down almost an entire up escalator (a taller one than usual, too, and I was maybe 8 feet from the top). My legs looked like I’d been slapped around by a strong but not particularly energetic bear.

        So I guess I need saving from both up escalators and my baggage. Story of my life, man.

        1. popelizbet +5

          I am a Person Who Falls Down Stairs and I salute you for surviving that experience as I might have simply had a heart attack.

    4. walrathem +5

      It took me awhile to realize that I’m not scared of dolls exactly so much as I’m very annoyed by how much dust they seem to collect. Not even the Swiffer works!

      1. typewriterandgramophone +5

        Someday I will have my own place, or at least a larger room, and I will get one of those dollhouse-shaped bookcases and put glass doors in it and go to town decorating for holidays and setting up tea parties and the like.

        Some chicks get book deals out of this sort of thing: http://www.amazon.com/Tasha-Tudors-Dollhouse-Life… (Hey, Johannes Brahms (composer, not evil mannikin) played with toy soldiers all his life and Nancy Willard, in adulthood, created the kind of dollhouse she’d longed for as a child, so I would be in good company.)

        1. walrathem +7

          So far there does seem to be a theme of “dolls just sitting there” which gives me the idea that people are creeped out because they imagine the dolls are bored and we all know how badly that can go.

          And as long as Civil War Reenactment is a valid hobby* then I think the rest of us should get a lot of leeway on our hobbies too.

          *and I think it’s kind of neat, not trying to put anybody’s hobby down here. I’m simply pointing out that it’s grown men playing dress-up and make-believe.

          1. tinypaperme +3

            …and sometimes hitting each other with sticks.

            Oh, wait, that’s Society for Creative Anachronism.

          2. walrathem +4

            I considered adding them but they seem to enjoy being dismissed by the mainstream. Besides, they hit each other with sticks, they don’t need anyone’s approval. CWR folks insist on being Important. Which, given that it commemorates 10’s of thousands of deaths is reasonable I suppose.

          3. popelizbet +8

            Dolls that get played with don’t bother me – it is precisely the idea of bored dolls that gets to me (the more “do not touch” the worse), and I never put it together before. Thank you!

          5. popelizbet +9

            The longer I am on the Internet, the more that I find there’s always someone who shares weird fears that in the pre-Internet age I assumed were individual and extremely strange. It’s kind of beautiful, like when you learn there’s actually a word for something you didn’t have a word for.

          6. typewriterandgramophone +6

            Yes to both of you. Dolls want to be played with the same way that Millennium Falcon Lego set wants to be assembled and disassembled and reassembled differently and get some of its pieces lost. Sometimes it seems like model train people are the only adults-with-toys who actually *play* with them.

  13. Glen H +29

    Uuugh, did anyone read about Hugette Clark? She apparently had a apartment on Fifth Avenue that housed just her collection of dolls. Nobody entered it except a few maintenance people from about 1965 until a few years ago when she died in a nursing home.
    The thought of them staring blankly into space for fifty years is just nightmare fuel.

    1. lyricalikons +6

      Oh, I’m listening to the audiobook about her life right now! Totally fascinating. Believe me, the dolls are really not nearly as creepy as the untreated skin cancer. But it also (only having heard the introduction and first chapter) seems like she was a rad lady.

    2. popelizbet +8

      I just actually no shit shuddered. I’m not particularly scared of dolls, but dolls plus lengthy time somehow trips my shit right out.

  14. LanaofTrebond +8

    If there was to be an Oakland contingent, especially of people who will also jump out of their seats at the slightest musical cue, I’d be in!

    1. treereenee +3

      I saw The Sixth Sense in Oakland and it was one of my most treasured movie experiences 🙂

  15. redheadscare +16

    Back when that Ouija movie came out, Youtube was asking something like “are you interested in this?” for every one of their ads, so I very carefully groomed it so every time a new horror movie comes out I get nothing but horror trailers and it’s EXQUISITE
    The Boy looks like it’s a straight-up Goosebumps book and I love everything about it. The bit where the painting grabs her! It’s delightful.

  16. popelizbet +14

    This is a movie I will watch after I can watch it in a private home and not make a fool of myself.
    If the ads/tags aren’t connecting this to that du Maurier sex doll story they totes should.

  19. betsymore +23

    Hate horror movies, love Toast discussions of them. So this thread made my Saturday morning and I am very much looking forward to Mallory’s review.

  20. enidnotrebecca +7

    Just got back from seeing it with some equally creepy-doll-obsessed friends. We definitely jumped a few times during the movie. But what was even creepier was looking up on the bus ride home just as we were passing Brahms’s house (aka Craigdarroch Castle).

  21. damanoid +24

    When I was but a wee protohuman, one of my evanescent career goals was to be a professional ventriloquist. This particular passing obsession coincided with the holiday season, so when my grandmother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I requested a vent dummy. I had no concept of what constituted a realistic price range for Santa Claus, and would routinely ask for things like gold bullion or pet monkeys.

    No doubt a professional-grade ventriloqual figure is fairly costly. However, Grandma somehow ran across a mail-order ad from the Johnson Smith catalog, better known for hawking whoopie cushions and “I’m With Stupid” t-shirts in the backs of comic books. Therefore, on Christmas morning I discovered that my wish had been granted in the form of a surpassingly cheap vent figure, with head and hands made of eggshell-thin injection molded plastic and a body glued together from felt swatches. Impressively, this Dollar Store-quality version retained all the horror potential of the professional variety. Most alarming was a tiny brass ring, tied to a string of elastic, protruding directly from the crown of the doll’s head. In hindsight this was obviously the cheapest possible way to secure the doll’s moving jaw action. This mysterious ring was labeled with a sticker labeled “DO NOT PULL.” What? WHY? My seven-year-old brain could not process this feature. What… what happens if I pull the ring? What if the ring gets pulled by accident? I taped the doll up back inside its carton and wedged it behind the toybox, secured by several layers of old clothes, and never touched it again. Later Grandma asked how I was progressing with my ventriloquist lessons. I think I told her the dog chewed the doll up or something.

    Bottom line: a misguided Christmas wish resulted in doll-induced horror and caused me to lie to my own grandmother.

    1. pigeonsquid +12

      Somehow my family acquired a clown doll. It was nightmare-inducing and I desperately wanted to get rid of it but was even more terrified that it would somehow return a la middle-school-sleepover-scary-story, so I just stuck it under my brother’s bed where presumably still is? Waiting to scare the shit out of whoever ends cleaning out my parents’ house after they move…

      1. damanoid +14

        At all times in history, but especially post-Poltergeist, clown dolls should not exist. There is simply no excuse to own or manufacture a clown doll. They are like leaded gasoline or DDT. There should be federal laws against them. Giving anyone, particularly a child, a clown doll is to say: I wish to scar you for life. Maybe that was their original function? Like being tattooed with fire ants or drinking the hallucinogenic vomit brew, a clown doll was a rite of passage. You either passed the ordeal or it killed you.

    2. femaelstrom +7

      Somehow, at some point probably before I was born, my mom acquired a ventriloquist dummy. How? Why? No one in my immediate family has ever expressed an interest in anything like this. I assume it moved itself in.

      Anyway, she decided to sell it on eBay, but of course she had to take it out of the box and take pictures of it for the listing. Long story short, I went into the basement one day to find a ventriloquist dummy sitting on the sofa and staring at me with dead eyes, and I’m honestly still a little angry at my mom for that.

  24. eviec

    I jumped and practically shrieked at the trailer but I would see it if I had friends to go with me. And then I’d stay up all night watching doorways looking for Brahms to perk around the corner.

  25. bluer0ses +2

    I had to leave The Hunger Games because this trailer played before it and I was too scared and anxious, so

  27. The Elitist Semicolon

    …and sometimes hitting each other with sticks.

    Oh, wait, that's Society for Creative Anachronism.

  28. The Elitist Semicolon

    Some off-balance carry-on luggage once knocked me down almost an entire up escalator (a taller one than usual, too, and I was maybe 8 feet from the top). My legs looked like I'd been slapped around by a strong but not particularly energetic bear.

    So I guess I need saving from both up escalators and my baggage. Story of my life, man.

  30. Didi +10

    I often spend hours in bed Wikipedia-ing the plots of horror movies, but never actually watch them. I’m REALLY excited for this one’s plot synopsis to make it to Wikipedia.

    1. elfsmirk +6

      I do that all the time! I’m interested in the plots of horror movies, but I’m too easily scared. Wikipedia just lays the facts out in such a clinical way it’s sort of soothing.