Lauren Cohan Talks ‘The Boy,’ Says Fans Of ‘The Walking Dead’ Will Enjoy The Horror Movie

Lauren Cohan is well on her way to becoming a scream queen. She’s given her voice box quite the workout on The Walking Dead, and she’s hoping that fans of her AMC series will be interested in hearing her shriek a bit more in her upcoming horror movie, The Boy.

In The Boy, Lauren Cohan plays an American nanny, named Greta, who heads to a creepy Gothic mansion in a remote area of England for a babysitting job interview that takes a very bizarre twist. When Greta discovers that the “child” she’ll be taking care of is actually a porcelain doll, she laughs and asks if she’s been “punk’d.” However, the incredulous nanny is informed that she really will be doll sitting, and she ultimately decides to take the unusual gig. After all, who wouldn’t want to get paid a handsome sum to watch an inanimate object?

Of course, Lauren Cohan’s character eventually discovers that the creepy doll isn’t so inanimate after all, and viewers will likely spend a large chunk of the horror movie trying to decide whether “the boy” is haunted by the spirit of an undead child or something more sinister. There’s also a chance that all the horror is actually happening inside Greta’s head.

During a recent interview with Celebuzz, Lauren Cohan said that she believes fans of The Walking Dead will enjoy The Boy, even though it’s a zombie-free film.

“It’s a different type of disturbance because she’s isolated and she’s not quite sure what’s real and what isn’t real, and I think it’s a different type of journey that she goes on,” Cohan said. “But yes, I think they will.”

On The Walking Dead, Lauren Cohan faces off against rotting corpses that aren’t interested in toying with the living – walkers just want to eat and run. Greta also deals with the undead in The Boy, but the evil entity that she goes up against is a little more complex than a zombie. She can’t quickly dispatch the evil being simply by taking out its brain because there’s no rotting human head to stab or shoot. Its motives are also more mysterious than those of a walker – it doesn’t kill right away, so there must be some reason it wants to keep the nanny alive.

During an interview with The Young Folks, Lauren Cohan pointed out that The Boy also differs from The Walking Dead because Greta doesn’t have a Glenn or a family of fellow survivors who work to protect each other from the undead.

“She’s just sort of drowning by herself in this and she doesn’t know throughout the film whether or not it’s really happening or whether she’s losing her mind,” Lauren said.

Lauren Cohan revealed that Greta actually develops an attachment to the creepy doll in The Boy, which is named Brahms. The toy acts as a surrogate child to a husband and wife that tragically lost their 8-year-old son many years ago, and the couple is insistent that Greta treats Brahms like a real boy. They give her a list of rules, and all hell seemingly breaks loose when the nanny dares to violate them. The couple is obviously trying to fill a void in their life by treating Brahms the same way they likely treated their dead son, and Lauren Cohan says that Greta eventually begins to understand their actions because she “has her own reasons for attaching herself to him.”

“Even though he is inanimate, the emotional satisfaction is real that she’s getting from this care-taking.”

What happens in The Boy might seem pretty straightforward: Greta discovers that Brahms is being haunted by the angry spirit of her employers’ dead son, their son was was an evil spoiled child who possibly killed a little girl, and he decides to torment Greta because she doesn’t follow the list of rules that his parents gave her. However, Lauren Cohan told MTV News that viewers should expect the unexpected near the end of the movie.

“It has some things that happen towards the end that are just twisted,” Cohan said.

Lauren Cohan also said something that fans of The Walking Dead might find a bit blasphemous.

“This doll puts zombies to shame.”

You can see if you agree with Lauren Cohan’s assessment of Brahms the doll when The Boy hits theaters on January 22.

[Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for AMC]