In other reviews on this site of recent vintage, I’ve bitched about how a particularly brutal work schedule kept me from getting to the theater to see anything new for a few months, and one of the flicks I definitely wanted to check out that hit screens in this early-2016 time frame was director William Brent Bell’s The Boy. It must have been a really solid marketing campaign that sold me on the idea of seeing this one, because Bell’s previous film, The Devil Inside, was an uninspired, derivative mess, but what can I say? Stories about evil dolls, puppets, ventriloquist’s dummies, and the like have always been right up my alley. So I was pleased as punch when a free DVD “screener” copy of this (with no extras included, but I’m not complaining) showed up in my mailbox courtesy of Universal/STX Entertainment. I guess sometimes it pays…