10 Horror Movies That Aren’t About What You Think

After Annabelle reminded everyone that horror movies about killer dolls can bring in stacks and stacks of cash, it was unsurprising when similar films were quickly put into the works.

One of these was the unimaginatively-titled The Boy, a horror that swapped out the dischevelled Annabelle for an eerily well-dressed doll called Brahms. The trailers promised the kind of scares that act as this sub-genre's bread and butter. You know the ones: the little doll kicking back in a rocking chair, very slowly turning his head when people aren't looking and returning unharmed even when his owners throw him away.

And, for the majority of the movie, it delivered on the promise of that. Audiences got to see the killer doll tropes played straight, as a family move into a house and become wary of Brahms, until a late reveal throws that all on its head.

As it turns out, this isn't a killer doll movie at all, but rather a movie about a human killer who lives in the walls of the house. Brahms the doll had no supernatural properties at all (well, not until he was given some via a sequel retcon), and the real Brahms was a disturbed man living in secret passageways the whole time.