Critically Hated Horror Movie Climbing the Netflix Charts

There is seemingly no real rhyme or reason why a movie catches the attention of Netflix’s streaming audience, oftentimes it’s just because a new movie has landed on the service, but that’s not what happened here and it doesn’t explain why a reviled horror movie is climbing the charts. Yup, Brahms: The Boy II, the 2020 sequel to another widely despised horror movie, has been sitting on the Netflix Top 10 for a few days now, hovering around the #7 and #8 position. Right now it’s the #5 movie on the service though, beating out Best Picture winners Titanic and The Hurt Locker. Fair? Who can say.

A financial disappointment upon release the film was also roasted by critics and currently holds a dismal 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus on the film reads: “More likely to induce boredom than quicken the pulse, Brahms: The Boy II is chiefly scary for the way it undermines the effectiveness of its above-average predecessor.” Even the audience score on the film is poor, holding 44% with over 1,000+ verified reviews. If you based the quality of the film on everyone tweeting about watching it on Netflix though it would paint a different picture, with users tweeting: “The boy 2 is on Netflix and I’m so happy”

We’re now going to spoil Brahms: The Boy II, so if you’ve made it this far and believe you still want to watch it, look away; something you’ll also be doing when you watch the film. In the original The Boy, released in 2016 and starring The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan, the film centered on a woman hired by an eccentric elderly couple to “look after their son,” who was actually a creepy percaline doll. Though the film played with expectations that the doll was alive through supernatural means, the big twist of the film was that Brahms was actually an adult and living in the walls, moving the doll around to give the appearance of something supernatural. Brahms: The Boy II however totally ignores this. 

In the sequel, starring Katie Holmes, the Brahms doll is supernaturally inclined and seduces children into killing their parents in hopes of finding a host, similar in nature to Annabelle, kind of. The main point here is that Brahsm: The Boy II completely retcons what happened before it in the first film and makes its big twist much less impactful. Perhaps most absurd about all this? Both films were made by the same creative team, director William Brent Bell and screenwriter Stacey Menear.

So if you’ve heard all this and you STILL want to watch Brahms: The Boy II, well, you’re not alone, and it’s streaming on Netflix right now.