{"id":594,"date":"2023-02-10T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/?p=594"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T11:46:12","slug":"pediophobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/02\/10\/pediophobia\/","title":{"rendered":"Pediophobia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WARNING:<\/mark> <\/strong>This Article May Contain Spoilers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve 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 Chucky<\/em>s and Annabelle<\/em>s of the horror world and delve a little deeper \u2013 especially as they wouldn\u2019t be the only ones to use to dolls to give the heebie-jeebies to their viewers, Saw <\/em>for example, but are two of the most famous doll antagonists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doll Master<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                I\u2019ll be honest, between the first 10 minutes and then everything that follows with the camera crew \u2013 this feels like two different films, almost trying to merge a doll horror with a \u2018found footage\u2019 film. I expected them to play on the schizophrenia a lot more than they actually did, almost as if to say it\u2019s been Norman all along, not Hugo the doll. I feel like it loses something once they start the \u2018found footage\u2019 part but that might be because the acting is a little weak. What I do like however, is that we don\u2019t actually see Hugo kill; we see him with the victim then a dripping knife<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doll in the Dark<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                I feel like this film tried to be overly clever. It\u2019s unclear to me who or what is the titular Doll in the Dark. <\/em>Is it the doll she makes of her mother, the doll found in the attic that was her mother\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doll House<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Here\u2019s something a little bit different, not just a doll \u2013 but a doll\u2019s 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\u2019s house but then Ava arrived. Truthfully, this film is based around dolls, plural, because the real people become dolls in Ava\u2019s doll house, imitating their moves before they die. I have to admit though, I find the fact that Emma\u2019s mute a little bit annoying and the medium didn\u2019t really seem to have much relevance to the story. I don\u2019t feel like it actually adds anything to the overall story. Plus, they only seem to make the main doll move once! But it\u2019s so subtle that some people might miss it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doll Factory<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                The acting in this film is absolutely poor! You can\u2019t even describe this as a B-movie because even most of the B-movies I\u2019ve seen had much better acting. OK, the rest of the film isn\u2019t as bad as the beginning. The dolls aren\u2019t 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 Pi\u00f1ata <\/em>with some of the nonsense things the dolls do, like vomiting and farting green goo. One of them even gets high!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Demonic Doll<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                So this film is actually a sequel. Its part of Richard Mansfield\u2019s Demonic Tapes <\/em>series which I feel like is his take on the same sort of stories as The Conjuring <\/em>as each film has its own plot separate from the previous. Now the one thing I\u2019m 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pin<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                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\u2019t make the scene where a nurse decides to \u2018get off\u2019 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\u2019s connection with Pin and it\u2019s not clear whether he actually knows he is Pin\u2019s voice. You\u2019d think he would be creepier when he\u2019s just an anatomy dummy but its actually worse when Leon dresses him and gives him skin! I know I compared Doll in the Dark <\/em>to Psycho <\/em>but I think this is much closer. For a good film, the only downside is that ending was a little predictable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers This isn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve 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 … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-extreme-fear-can-neither-fight-nor-fly","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}