Watch: Alternative Ending For Brahms: The Boy II Released

Horror sequel Brahms: The Boy II might have passed you by even if you were a fan of the original. If you did catch it and care enough to remember though, an alternative ending has been made available ahead of the movie’s home release.

After surviving a home invasion, the story sees spouses Liza and Sean move across the country with their young son Jude, only to end up in a house with a sinister history surrounding the titular porcelain doll Jude finds buried in the surrounding woods. Initially believing Jude is using the doll to express himself following his muteness from the trauma, Liza and Sean realize too late that it houses a malevolent force that wants their son for itself.

The ‘alternative’ ending, which for the most part just cuts off an epilogue that leaves things considerably less ambiguous, sees Jude staring into a furnace after throwing in the doll, a close up of the flames reflected in his eyes leaving it for the viewer to decide whether or not he is free of its influence. It also slightly alters the doll’s look, with the original climax seeing the doll’s head being completely shattered to reveal a demonic form of shaky CGI, whereas here it does away with the baffling retcon and shows it to still be hollow, retaining a vertical shard with one eye glaring in perpetual accusation.

Unnecessary sequels are even more common for horror films than they are in non-genre movie production, and this story was so removed from the first entry that it feels like it was originally an unrelated script for an entirely different creepy doll movie that was retrofitted to act as a follow-up, the relevant past events being written in to afford the narrative a nebulous connection to what came before. Most egregiously, the sequel incorporates genuinely supernatural elements that undermine the predecessor, whose bizarre occurrences were revealed to have a rational, if somewhat preposterous explanation.

This variation on the final moments of Brahms: The Boy II doesn’t really make a great deal of difference to the viewing experience of the film, and to be honest, rather than being all that bothered about exactly how the movie ended, most people watching it were just glad when it did.