The Gospel of Brahms

The Gospel of Brahms

By “Doc” Hunter Bush


In the church of cinema, all are welcome.

When you watch a lot of movies as I do, it’s hard to find yourself really and truly reeling from a film. Not “surprised” in the usual “I’ve never seen that before”, or “I can’t believe we’re going there” ways. Numerous filmmakers’ entire filmographies are those kinds of films. No. I’m talking about a tricksier bit of cinematic magic: the kind where you think you’re well ahead of the movie you’re watching, savvy to all the coming reveals, when in fact you couldn’t be less on the trolley.


The Old Testament:


William Brent Bell’s 2016 slow burn thriller The Boy and 2020 sequel Brahms: The Boy 2 are exactly this kind of movie. I’ve spoken at length about my opinion of the original flick and my experience watching it for the first time (on the Hate Watch/Great Watch podcast, episode 45), but I’m always happy to do so again. I am not a religious man by inclination, but I will happily be the prophet of the Gospel of Brahms and to grow the film’s flock.

I implore you to seek out and experience these films for yourself before continuing, but for those still here: The Boy tells the story of Greta (Lauren Cohan), a young American woman taking a live-in childcare job for the Heelshire family in England. At first it seems like Greta will be caring for a doll which the Heelshires simply think is their deceased son Brahms - a phenomena called Animism - before Greta starts to think that perhaps Brahms is, in some way, a conduit for a spirit. The script by Stacey Menear even leaves breadcrumbs implying that the spirit in the house is not of the dead Heelshire boy but of a childhood playmate named Emily Cribbs who passed away under suspicious circumstances decades ago. This misdirection works so well because it appears as if it’s hidden, giving the viewer the feeling that they’re piecing everything together when in fact they’re ignoring much bigger, stranger clues hidden in plain sight.

The rules, for instance. Greta is left a list of rules that she must follow, lest she risk angering the temperamental Brahms. Some, such as Rule 6. Play Music Loud could be explained via supernatural predilections: maybe the afterlife is noisy? But others, like Rule 3. Leave Meals in Freezer seem to have no unearthly explanation. In the finale, it is revealed that Brahms’ shenanigans aren’t supernatural but rather the work of a human - albeit a very strange, obsessive, socially hampered one -  who has been living in the walls of his family home since childhood; a ruse intended to shirk any responsibility in the death of Emily Cribbs.

Watching the Brahms-the-man emerge from the wall (wearing a porcelain mask, as one does) is one of those transcendent film moments. To quote Rosalie Kicks “Your pants are shit.” I remember scooting forward until I was literally on the edge of my bed with my jaw wide open and my eyes even wider somehow. It was without a doubt one of the biggest viewing surprises in my adult life. So much so that I began to, slowly, quietly, devote my life to spreading the good word of Brahms.

The Boy was not a huge success. No one really made much of a fuss about it during its release. In fact, I only watched it on a whim via a streaming service some years later. The fact that there had been no chatter about a sequel or any inkling of an extended Brahms cinematic universe in all the time since release led me to presume that it would remain a secret, shared only among a chosen few. But lo and behold one day I heard the good word! A miracle had happened! Someone had greenlit a sequel! Huzzah! That sequel would end up being called Brahms: The Boy 2 and it would upend everything I thought I knew about Brahms.

The New Testament:


Though Brahms-the-man had apparently perished in the final moments of the Old Testament, here we are introduced to another traumatized family who end up finding Brahms-the-doll half buried in the woods around the former Heelshire estate and begin to experience similar, though less obtusely supernatural, activities. There are new rules this time, and more violence, and we learn that there is more to “Brahms” than we’d originally thought. Not only has Brahms-the-doll been around far longer than it previously seemed, but he’s always been associated with violence; killer children specifically.

Again, I urge you to seek out and experience both of the testaments for yourself, but having said that: In the climax of the New Testament, we see that the doll, previously thought to be only that, is actually the physical vessel for some gnarled, profane thing - headflesh pulsating, oozing fluids from it’s sphincteral mouth - despite being hundreds of years old! We learn that it whispers to its victims, who seem to historically be male, and take a kind of control of them where they are in its thrall and no longer fully in command of their own minds, nor actions. After seemingly destroying Brahms-the-doll, the family believe they have returned to some form of normalcy only for the film’s final moments to reveal that Brahms-the-thing still has its connection to son Jude (Christopher Convery).

Clearly we have not learned all there is to learn about “Brahms”.

The Gospel of Brahms


When the slasher franchises of the ‘80s lumbered their way into the theaters of the ‘90s, they took chances. Jason went to Manhattan, Hell, and eventually space; Michael Myers was revealed to bear an ancient rune which explained his supernatural singlemindedness; Freddy got meta. Your mileage may vary on how well any of these choices played out, but you have to admire the gusto. Both entries into the Boy franchise capture that same energy, the feeling of the rug dying to be pulled out from under you without a moment’s notice and with no care for your feelings on the matter.

In a better world, The Boy would have as many titles on the metaphorical video store shelf as Friday the 13th, or Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm St. There should be a new canon of post-millennial slasher boogeymen that includes Brahms, as well as Ma, Krampus and The Empty Man (each from their respective titles), maybe even Gabriel from Malignant. Why not? I feel less and less like filmmakers are being constrained by their genres, relying on audiences’ familiarity with certain clichés to set up the twists and turns ahead.

Any film can have a “twist ending”, but few pull it off as satisfyingly as The Boy. Each time I rewatch it, I notice some new subtle detail that supports the ending. Not even The Boy 2 can catch that lightning in a bottle twice, but I still admire its swagger. To commit so thoroughly to an ending as ludicrous as “the doll was really hiding an unknown creature” is …impressive if nothing else. I doubt we’ll get any further entries into the franchise, but I’d’ve said the same and been wrong before. Where could these possible future installments lead? What could they reveal? The franchise has proven that nothing is really off the table.

During the pandemic lockdown, MovieJawn adopted Brahms as a mascot for COVID safety, imploring everyone to “follow the rules”. Neither myself nor MovieJawn condone the actions, methodologies, or objectives of Brahms he/they/itself, because that’s not what the Gospel of Brahms is about. It’s about surprises. About the audience being guided on a journey where you think you know your destination. About that visceral pants-shit fun you can only have with movies. Each film takes a big swing and, when viewed on their own, can be extremely entertaining viewing experiences that defy the jaded “seen it all” feelings that, sadly, many genre efforts tend to elicit. When considered as parts of a larger story however, they become fascinatingly strange; hinting at a great, dark and glittering chasm beyond the confines of familiar, easy, genre expectations.

With his serene porcelain visage and fancy lad sweater vest ensemble, Brahms just seems so reasonable. And he is, so long as everyone follows the rules. But perhaps you have to know the rules to know when you can break the rules. And that is the Gospel of Brahms. Amen.

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This piece was written for MovieJawn, a fabulous site where you can find tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine, or listen to me on the  Hate Watch / Great Watch  podcast! Support the MovieJawn Patreon here!
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