The horror movie named after a classical composer

Johannes Brahms was a German composer who lived between 1833 and 1897. He spent much of his professional career in Vienna. Because of his talent and influence, he was often considered to be one of the "three B's" of classical music, along with Beethoven and Bach.

He was not, you would think, a likely inspiration for a horror movie.

Yet that's the impression created by the new movie Brahms: The Boy II, which has recklessly invited confusion among audiences who don't know what the hell this movie is on about.

Now I did not see The Boy, a 2016 horror movie that was apparently successful enough to spawn this sequel. I can tell, from a little cursory research, that the porcelain doll from the first movie (who reappears here) is called Brahms. So the mistakes started happening four years ago.

Though I myself would not have chosen to name the original doll after the composer, it's not such a problem in that first film, because any character can have any name within the context of a movie. It's when you start using that name in the title of the sequel that things get messy.

I'm sure I wasn't the only person who didn't know that the doll was called Brahms, so when I saw the title of this movie, I thought "What the hell does this horror movie have to do with classical music?" It's not really a thought process you want your audience to have.

This is not, though, a confusion that belongs exclusively to this movie. You could say a similar thing about the comedy Keanu that came out a couple years ago, which has nothing to do with Keanu Reeves. The cat is named Keanu there. And that cat is probably named after Keanu Reeves, because, you know, what other Keanu is there. But the movie's title then makes you stop and ask questions.

Is Brahms considered a bland enough name that it might not make someone immediately think of the composer? I don't believe it is. When I go to the Brahms disambiguation page on Wikipedia, there is not much ambiguity that needs to be disambiguated. The only other notable people with that surname are Albert, a German landowner who lived in the 18th century; Caryl, a writer; David, a Brigadier General of the U.S. Marine Corps; Helma Sanders-Brahms, a German film director; Julia, a voice artist; and William B., a New Jersey historian.

I think it would be a lot more obvious what I'm talking about if the porcelain doll had been called Beethoven. There would be no confusing that there was a relationship between the movie and the composer, a probably undesirable one at that. Then again, it could also be that there was a relationship between the movie and that other movie, Beethoven, about that dog.

So, I guess this has been going on for a while.