Director: Mj Dixon
Year: 2019
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: Bannister DollHouse
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After a series of bizarre encounters, a family trying to cope with their daughters’ unconventional and inexplicable behavior slowly comes to believe it’s all tied together with a creepy doll the girl has an unhealthy obsession with and tries to free her from its grip which grows more dangerous once it knows their intentions.
Review:
This one proved to be a solid enough effort. Among the best features here is the rather enjoyable setup on display that highlights how much influence the doll has over the child. Shown to almost immediately freak out the older sister to the point of needing to leave the room mere minutes after purchase and then requiring a doctor's visit soon after, it generates a nice atmosphere when combined with the later scenes of the family coming undone by her strange behavior since getting the doll. The adherence to it and not letting anyone near it, the adamant refusal to follow instructions from authorities unless they directly talk to her and the general sense of psychological unrest portrayed all showcase.
That all comes into play quite nicely here in the rather spectacular scenes featuring the dolls’ haunting coming to fruition. The innocuous scenes of her disobeying her mother and acting creepy give way to far more obvious scenes here of the doll taking over which run the gamut from footsteps rushing by out-of-focus of everything else, eerie whispers, and even strange figures popping up behind victims unexpectedly. That manages to provide enough of a lead-up to the finale where it becomes far more obvious and overtly supernatural by including the impressive attack on the family where it fully utilizes its cursed powers to generate some decent spectacle shots on this budget. These factors all come together to give this a lot to like.
This one does manage to bring about a few issues with it. The main drawback to this one is the bizarre setup involving the family dynamic at the house. As the father and oldest sister seem to be in complete agreement on how to treat the dolls’ influence over them, that the mother is at the opposite end towards being aware of something not being right in the house but not what is way too farfetched to be realistic. That they’ve split up is never revealed why and it all points to a strained atmosphere that no one wants to acknowledge is caused by something so obvious, which also causes the other big flaw here in the rather stilted pacing focusing on building up to something that’s quite obvious.
Overview: ****/5
A highly effective supernatural genre effort, the few detriments here don’t have much of a drawback but instead just drop it slightly enough based on the more worthwhile positives making this a lot of fun. Those who appreciate this kind of supernatural genre outing or are fans of the creative crew will have quite a lot to like here, while those who don’t like either of these factors should heed caution.
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