In 1989, John Henley owns a rural hotel in Colorado. After his wife abandons him, John retreats from his responsibilities into alcoholism. William Colby, a drifter, has a car accident near the hotel and befriends John's nine-year-old son, Ted. Unknown to John, Ted has become morbidly fascinated with death and has been acting out violently. With William's appearance, Ted begins to experiment with his urges to kill.
Film co-writer and director Craig William Macneill said that the themes of the film include "the dangerous blend of isolation, neglect and youth", and that audiences should take from his film a greater interest in the welfare of neighboring children.
Production
The story has its genesis in a book written by Clay McLeod Chapman, Miss Corpus. Chapman said that few people had read it except for Macneill. Fond of one chapter in particular, Macneill suggested they expand it to a short film, which eventually screened at the Sundance Film Festival. SpectreVision took an interest in the short, and it was expanded to feature length. A full trilogy is planned in which the lead character's progress will be examined at the ages of 9, 13, and 18. The trilogy is not based on the book and is original material. Macneill expects the films to be released in quick succession. Filming began on February 17, 2014, in Medellin, Colombia. Colombia was chosen due to its tax incentives and the fact that they could afford to build their own set – something not possible in the United States for their budget. It took six weeks to construct. Composer Hauschka was announced to have joined in April 2014.
, a review aggregator, reports that 61% of 18 surveyed critics gave it a positive review with an average rating of 5.6/10, while Metacritic rated it 45/100 based on reviews from eight critics. Both Eric Kohn of Indiewire and Charlie Schmidlin of The Playlist found the film to be effective but dramatically lacking. Kohn wrote that the film "maintains a gripping sense of atmospheric dread", although its "consistently grave tone sometimes threatens to suffocate the dramatic momentum", while Schmidlin felt that the film has "extremely effective" parts, but it plays into negative stereotypes of "slow burn" psychological dramas. These sentiments were echoed by Ain't It Cool News who praised its "dark, broody tone", and by Dennis Harvey of Variety who wrote that the film seemed "endless and dull". Of the film's director, Craig Macneill, Carson Lund of Slant Magazine wrote, "Even if his talents tip the scales toward overstatement, Macneill has a command for composition and rhythm that belies his skinny résumé, and one can't help but be unnerved by Breeze's relentlessly deer-in-the-headlights performance as the sociopathic Ted." Samuel Zimmerman of Shock Till You Drop commended Macneill's restraint and noted that his "disinterest in making a traditional slasher, let alone an iconic one, ultimately ends up with one of the most memorable contemporary iterations." Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle also found it "more measured than the usual demon-child fare". Dominick Suzanne-Mayer of Consequence of Sound was impressed by the acting and wrote, "If the film itself slips a little too easily into the banality it’s chronicling at times, The Boy is sustained by the measured performances of the handful of wayward souls in its sparse, bleak world." Drew Tinnin of Dread Central and Anton Bitel of Sight and Sound both believed that the film rewarded patient viewing. Tinnin wrote that "The slow start does pay off, however, with a conclusion that's shocking even after seeing what Ted’s already been up to", while Bitel found it to be "a slow-burner that builds and builds to its climactic conflagration". Bitel also compared it to Richard Linklater's Boyhood and considered The Boy to be a "disturbing flipside" to Linklater's film that succeeds in creating an "austere and chilling portrait of America's abandoned margins". Andy Webster of the New York Times was impressed overall; he felt that the film worked despite its dramatic shortcomings, and called it "a feature stunning to behold" despite finding it "somewhat unpersuasive in narrative". However, Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter took an opposing view and wrote, "While it's admirable that director Macneill and his co-scripter Clay McLeod Chapman opted to emphasize mood and psychology over the story's more exploitable elements, it nonetheless results in a listless tedium that isn't helped by the overly long running time." Ken W. Hanley of Fangoria listed The Boy as one of his top tenhorror films of 2015 and it also received two Fangoria Chainsaw Award nominations in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Score categories. Zack Sharf and Emily Buder of Indiewire selected the film as one of their "13 Most Criminally Overlooked Indies and Foreign Films of 2015", while HitFix included it in their list of "14 Great Under the Radar Films from 2015".
