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Rate this movie

Oof, that was Rotten.

Meh, it passed the time.

It’s good – I’d recommend it.

Awesome!

So Fresh: Absolute Must See!

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The Boy Photos

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Movie Info

A 9-year-old sociopath becomes increasingly fascinated with death.

Genre:

mystery and thriller, drama, horror
Original Language:

English
Director:

Craig William Macneill
Producer:

Douglas Brown, Andrés Calderón, Daniel Noah
Writer:

Craig William Macneill, Clay McLeod Chapman
Release Date (Streaming):

Nov 30, 2015
Runtime:

1h 45m

Cast & Crew

Mike Vogel
Dad

Rainn Wilson
William Colby

David Morse
John

Zuleikha Robinson
Mom

Bill Sage
Sheriff

Aiden Lovekamp
Ben

Show all Cast & Crew

News & Interviews for The Boy

Straight Outta Compton Is A Powerful Biopic

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Critic Reviews for The Boy

All Critics (21) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (14) | Rotten (7)

It makes no bones about the fact that there is something critically broken in Ted. The question for the audience is whether it is nature, nurture, or a mixture of both.

September 11, 2015 | Full Review…

Richard Whittaker
Austin Chronicle
The Boy is a title that makes this movie sound innocuous. A more fitting header would be Portrait of the Serial Killer as a Young Boy.

September 1, 2015 | Full Review…

Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle
Mr. Macneill and his co-screenwriter, Clay McLeod Chapman, have developed a feature stunning to behold if somewhat unpersuasive in narrative.

August 20, 2015 | Full Review…

Andy Webster
New York Times
The film feels overly long, and while lingering shots of the mountain scenery do help convey the isolation of the deserted motel, too many of them feel repetitive.

August 18, 2015 | Rating: C+ | Full Review…

Devan Coggan
Entertainment Weekly
Craig William Macneill's film is a sporadically frightening slow burn with a fatally overlong fuse.

August 18, 2015 | Rating: 2/4 | Full Review…

Chuck Bowen
Slant Magazine
While the score goes out of its way to make his every action feel sinister, the picture doesn't fulfill its horrific potential until the third act.

August 12, 2015 | Full Review…

Sherilyn Connelly
Village Voice
With how slow the film is, and the fact that all the action only really occurs within the last 15 minutes of the film (and even then it isn't that action packed), I would say this film is definitely not for everyone.

November 2, 2018 | Rating: 6/10 | Full Review…

Molly Henery
The Blogging Banshee
A thoughtful story that is as touching as it is unnerving, The Boy is an unflinching & powerfully poetic examination of the human psyche that never passes judgment on its titular character, even after he's unleashed his inner lunatic on the world.

January 6, 2016 | Rating: 3.5/5 | Full Review…

Heather Wixson
Daily Dead
An austere and chilling portrait of America's abandoned margins, The Boy is a slow-burner that builds and builds to its climactic conflagration, and offers a dark, disturbing flipside to Richard Linklater's Boyhood (2014).

November 6, 2015 | Full Review…

Anton Bitel
Projected Figures
It succeeds in conveying the dark edge of an effective thriller, but it lacks the human sentiment -- the poignancy, the devastation -- that would've made it soar above less heady genre fare.

September 16, 2015 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…

Mark H. Harris
About.com
Not since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer has a movie gotten inside the head of a killer with such cold-blooded artistry.

September 1, 2015 | Full Review…

Devin Faraci
Birth.Movies.Death.
The Boy is a very slow burn, one that successfully works to the narrative at hand, but isn't particularly enjoyable to watch.

August 28, 2015 | Rating: 2.5/5 | Full Review…

Ben Kendrick
Screen Rant

View All Critic Reviews (21)

Audience Reviews for The Boy

Apr 26, 2016

As innocuous as its title, it is awfully directed and edited, poorly paced and hugely incompetent in whatever it is trying to do as it fails to portray the kid's evolution into a psychopath (he comes off as just annoying), and it is only not a complete disaster because of its forceful ending.

Carlos M Super Reviewer