Director: Louisa Warren
Year: 2023
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Killer Dolls
Plot:
Going to visit her family, a woman discovers a family legacy tied to a pair of mischievous dolls in the house, which might be driving her mother crazy as she’s become convinced they’re alive, eventually bringing her and her family members into the dark reach of the dolls themselves.
Review:
This was a fairly solid and better-than-expected gene effort. Among the better elements of this one comes from the highly effective storyline that manages to tie together some impressive factors alongside a decent secondary series of factors. Focusing on the family get-together that causes the girls to get together and learn about the mother’s strange belief in the dolls being alive as she continually brings up the different background bits about what the dolls represent and how they drive her belief in them being alive and furthering their belief that she’s become mentally unstable is a fine way to go about this kind of genre effort. It leaves this with an intriguing psychological factor that runs wild in the first half, where it treads on this storyline rather nicely as we get the more normal introduction to the characters and the sidestories going on with them, which allows everything to build quite nicely as to whether the dolls are alive or the mother’s become unhinged.
That these are balanced nicely by the interactions of the dolls around the outskirts of the story brings everything together quite nicely. The mother’s interactions, trying not to let the fact that she thinks the dolls are alive, are incredibly fun, making the different mocking voices and skittish glimpses of them around the edges of the furniture have a nice touch that brings that hallucination storyline to the forefront. Later scenes showing them hanging out around the house and trying to taking out the various members of the family, including a scene of them stalking a victim taking a bath, another victim stuck in her room and unable to call for help when it appears the dolls are alive, or another victim investigating a strange noise nearby only to find the dolls are responsible are just as much fun. Using the special low-level camera tricks to pull off the idea of their size disparity against the rest of the cast, it makes them feel genuinely alive and helps to give this some solid enough factors.
There are some drawbacks present that hold this one down. The main detriment with this one is the immensely confusing nature of the family drama that takes place as a secondary storyline within this one, which allows for some rather underwhelming segments throughout here. One of the main storylines about the family arriving at the house and trying to catch up means that it dregs up some inane and truly infuriating bits of family drama, from the mother keeping secrets from her daughters or the one daughter trying to keep a traumatic incident from her friend that’s there to visit, and hardly any of it is all that interesting to play out or sit through. This comes about through the repeated use of these tropes as a common occurrence in these films, and it just becomes rather tiring trying to give them a chance to play out, even though this is somewhat excused due to how it all ties into the finale. As well, the film’s low-budget origins are also quite heavily on display, especially the cheesy effects for the puppet dolls, leaving this with some problematic factors.
Overview: ***.5/5
An enjoyable and better-than-expected genre effort, there’s a lot to like here that manages to hold up over the few minor drawbacks present that do lower this one overall. Those with an appreciation for this style of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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