Director: Andrew Jones
Year: 2017
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Killer Doll
Plot:
After escaping the Nazis, a woman who saw her parents murdered for harboring a government fugitive seeks shelter in a nearby village with a kind toymaker who takes her in to keep her safe from the pursuing government agents and uses a special living doll to exact revenge for them.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty solid, if flawed, entry in the series. Among the better elements here is the way this uses the doll's appearance in a more sympathetic light than the previous entries, which cast it in a more ominous, sinister tone. This one goes back to a period piece involving the Nazis looking for the book held by a fugitive from the state and getting into contact with the family whose daughter escapes with the book and arrives at the shop of the fabled toymaker who provides her protection and safety from the Nazi leader looking to acquire it for himself. This causes some immensely fun back-and-forth sequences featuring the increasingly frustrated Nazi leader searching for her, trying to spur his insubordinates to find her and the book hidden in the shop, with a series of interactions between her and the toymaker that give everything here a strong start.
This all leads into the rather intriguing finale, where the different storylines converge to great effect. As the Nazis hunting down the book part of the story features them being frustrated every time around and unable to do anything while watching the secondary story about the toymaker’s apprentice grow more frustrated with him over his treatment of the daughter and taking her under his wing more due to the book’s powers that enable him to bring the dolls to life, this all brings the full confrontation to a head when the Nazis finally learn the truth about what’s going on and bring their might down on him at their camp. Bringing about the uniquely obvious route of the dolls coming to life and getting him free of their plans to rouse the secrets of the book for themselves, the execution of it all comes together rather nicely, even if all it does is remind the viewer of the same type of action with the same setup in the same franchise installment of another film that this runs parallel to.
Beyond that, there’s also the problem that has plagued this and the rest of the franchise entries the whole way through, where it’s just so sluggish and slow-going that it barely musters up any kind of interest in what’s going on. The lack of action here, especially killer doll action with the setpiece kills relegated to the final rescue operation on the Nazi base, renders this one rather dull where it doesn’t need to be. The majority of the film is relegated to the Nazis trying to hunt them down, so we get extended, almost excruciatingly slow scenes of him going around to the family searching their house for the intruder on multiple visits, discussing the botched search for the book with his insubordinates, or just generally acting evil for the purposes of being a Nazi rather than anything more compelling. As a result, the dolls are never given anything to do and barely even function in the story at all, with them being painted in the hero role at the end, and with the generally obvious low-budget limitations on display, all keep this one down.
Overview: **.5/5
An intriguing if problematic franchise entry, this one comes off rather nicely as a standalone film, even if it feels way too similar to other films in the genre and features some of the same problems as the other franchise entries. Those with an interest in the style, who have enjoyed the previous franchise entries, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have a lot to like, as most others out there should heed caution.
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