WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, but this was genuinely a fear I had growing up. Especially as I had someone repeatedly buying porcelain dolls that just stared at me while I slept (getting shivers just thinking about it). I wanted to stay away from the Chuckys and Annabelles of the horror world and delve a little deeper – especially as they wouldn’t be the only ones to use to dolls to give the heebie-jeebies to their viewers, Saw for example, but are two of the most famous doll antagonists.
Doll Master
I’ll be honest, between the first 10 minutes and then everything that follows with the camera crew – this feels like two different films, almost trying to merge a doll horror with a ‘found footage’ film. I expected them to play on the schizophrenia a lot more than they actually did, almost as if to say it’s been Norman all along, not Hugo the doll. I feel like it loses something once they start the ‘found footage’ part but that might be because the acting is a little weak. What I do like however, is that we don’t actually see Hugo kill; we see him with the victim then a dripping knife
Doll in the Dark
I feel like this film tried to be overly clever. It’s unclear to me who or what is the titular Doll in the Dark. Is it the doll she makes of her mother, the doll found in the attic that was her mother’s or is it Dukken who she ultimately turns into a doll? The latter is just sick in my mind because I feel like she only does it because his name means doll or because she just doesn’t want to be alone. Honestly, I spent the majority of the film expecting the mother-doll to take on a life of its own and was unfortunately disappointed, but it is good to see a film not go down the typical possession route and instead play it a little bit more like Psycho.
Doll House
Here’s something a little bit different, not just a doll – but a doll’s house as well. At first I thought this film was going to be set up as a flashback. You know, that it turned out Emma is mute because of an incident with a doll and a doll’s house but then Ava arrived. Truthfully, this film is based around dolls, plural, because the real people become dolls in Ava’s doll house, imitating their moves before they die. I have to admit though, I find the fact that Emma’s mute a little bit annoying and the medium didn’t really seem to have much relevance to the story. I don’t feel like it actually adds anything to the overall story. Plus, they only seem to make the main doll move once! But it’s so subtle that some people might miss it.
Doll Factory
The acting in this film is absolutely poor! You can’t even describe this as a B-movie because even most of the B-movies I’ve seen had much better acting. OK, the rest of the film isn’t as bad as the beginning. The dolls aren’t exactly scary but they are definitely weird looking. Even more so that they move like any doll would when being played with by children. It reminds a lot of Killer Piñata with some of the nonsense things the dolls do, like vomiting and farting green goo. One of them even gets high!
The Demonic Doll
So this film is actually a sequel. Its part of Richard Mansfield’s Demonic Tapes series which I feel like is his take on the same sort of stories as The Conjuring as each film has its own plot separate from the previous. Now the one thing I’m unsure of is whether the doll is already alive from the beginning of the film or if Rose, listening to tapes, awakens it. The photos on her iPad would say the former but it is really hard to be sure. I love the fact that this is just a small cast and the subtlety of certain moments in this film – like the way her duvet starts to lift up on its own and the fact that her cross ends up upside-down on her wall. The only annoying thing is that the tapes seem to take precedence over the doll.
Pin
The use of this film really depends on whether you feel an anatomy dummy constitutes as a doll. No matter what your standpoint on it is it doesn’t make the scene where a nurse decides to ‘get off’ with Pin any less weird. However, I love the fact that instead of following along the usual slasher they decided to go for more of a psychological thriller. Pin never directly kills anyone and can only move when Leon moves him. The creepiest thing about the whole film is Leon’s connection with Pin and it’s not clear whether he actually knows he is Pin’s voice. You’d think he would be creepier when he’s just an anatomy dummy but its actually worse when Leon dresses him and gives him skin! I know I compared Doll in the Dark to Psycho but I think this is much closer. For a good film, the only downside is that ending was a little predictable.
