With great power comes great responsibility. Thank you for that great life lesson, Uncle Ben. If I possessed the power to heal a person’s psychological and emotional pain with a simple hug, would I charge a fee for providing this service to the townspeople? That’s kind of what I thought this movie was centered around initially, but I was wrong; the movie is so much more than that. The Holy Boy is a spectacular Italian dark horror movie that explores quite a few different issues. I think a lot of horror movie fans will get a kick out of this one.

The story in The Holy Boy consists of a saddened and disgruntled judo teacher moving to a remote town to teach younger kids. It’s only a temporary gig, but while in a bar, he offends a beautiful bartender with his drunken rage. Instead of never wanting to see him again, she actually pities him and offers to take him to a special place that can help him with his grief and sorrow. From there, Sergio witnesses and participates in a weird ritual in which it seems to have cleansed him afterward of his anger, sorrow, and guilt. We then slowly learn how this odd teenager is deprived of a normal life outside of being forced to perform this daily/weekly ritualistic duty of being hugged and the consequences and effects it has on him. It culminates in a beautifully done last 20 minutes of the movie runtime.

So, there are a couple of things to unpack for me. In the beginning, we see that Matteo, as a baby, had no control over his powers. We witness Matteo switching over to his mother and with him not understanding what is happening, he made her mother crawl on all fours to the window and jump out. I for sure thought this would have killed her but turns out it didn’t and instead, it turned her into a vegetative state. Secondly, it’s not implied but it would seem that Matteo’s father and his cronies made money from the townsfolk. I thought I would have seen more scenes depicting this but I only assume this because he drives a very nice Range Rover and lives in a large cabin isolated from the town.

Regarding the ending, I loved it. It felt perfectly in line with the overall dark mood of the movie. The scene where the entire town rushed to mob Matteo, who was strapped to the chair, was both insane and terrifying. However, I am somewhat lost about what happens next to the town, Matteo, and Sergio himself. With Matteo now controlling the minds of everyone he has hugged before, what comes next? It can be assumed that he is now able to live with Sergio, but is it through Michela’s body? How will that work? It may not have mattered much to Sergio, as he was planning to leave Michela anyway by skipping town, but now that this has happened, what will he do? Even if Matteo lives on in Michela or someone else’s body, he still unfortunately won’t get to experience a normal life, and that is the bitterness and horror of it all. As for the entire town, can it be assumed that everyone will simply die off since they can no longer control themselves, and Matteo cannot return to his original body? It seems as if no one in town was spared. If true, it would be quite shocking to learn that each person could have freed themselves from the need to hug Matteo if they had only confronted their own grief and guilt and owned it. Yet, no one did except for Sergio, and that was only after being forced to. This brings to the forefront the issue of how psychologically and emotionally fragile humans can be and yet this is what separates us from wild beasts and monsters.