A scene from the movie Annabell. Photo / YouTube
The Conjuring director James Wan produced Annabelle, and along with collaborator Leigh Whannell, is definitely modern cinema's most prominent proponent of the creepy doll film. A creepy doll mask informed Saw to no end, and the pair were also behind the underrated Dead Silence - see below.
I haven't seen Annabelle yet, but my excitement about the emergence of a successful creepy doll film got me thinking about the best examples. These are what I consider to be the top five creepy doll movies:
5. Magic (1978)
Steven Spielberg at one point toyed with the idea of making this film, which ended up being directed by his future Jurassic Park star, the recently departed Richard Attenbourough. Novelist/screenwriter William Goldman (Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) adapted his own novel about a ventroliquist who may or may not be in the thrall of his dummy, Fats.
Magic is an enduringly creepy film, and a never-more-youthful Anthony Hopkins is fantastic in the lead role. Although it's totally over the top in some ways, it's relatively restrained in others. The film continually refuses to definitively take a stance on whether or not Fats is actually sentient. That frustrated me watching the film as a kid, but I appreciated it more when I revisited the film.
Fats himself is truly disturbing, if only for how his head is weirdly huge.
4. Child's Play (1988)
Although the marketing played down the presence of a doll, the original Child's Play was enough of a success to generate a raft of sequels, several of which went totally meta on the concept.
I always preferred the more po-faced horror of the first three films, which managed to actually generate proper creepiness from the idea of a sentient Cabbage Patch Kid, as ridiculous as that sounds. A recent direct-to-DVD sequel returned to the more traditional horror of the franchise's beginnings, to beneficial effect.
I can remember being genuinely concerned that my toys were going to come alive and kill me. Child's Play effectively exploited into that universal fear. It is universal, right?
3. Toy Story 3 (2010)
A scene from Toy Story 3.
The beloved Toy Story franchise had always put forward a pretty benevolent take on the idea that toys come to life when people aren't around, but the third film succeeded by accessing the darker side of the notion.
Toy Story 3 tapped into the inherent creepiness of a stuffed teddy bear with the character of Lotso (voiced by Ned Beatty) - his villainy was all the more disturbing for his cuddly exterior.
Plus Toy Story 3 deserves to be on this list alone for Ken (as in Barbie and Ken), who is awesomely creepy in this, and even helps Lotso further his nefarious ends. As voiced by a perfectly cast Michael Keaton, the film gets a lot of milage out of this unique take on the character.
2. Dead Silence (2007)
A scene from Dead Silence.
This underrated horror was James Wan and Leigh Whannell's follow-up to the original Saw, and it was clearly designed to be the ultimate creepy doll movie. It almost is.
The filmmakers' love for the trope is evident in every frame - an affectionate mythology is spun around a dead old woman obsessed with ventriloquism dolls. For fans of the sub-genre, it's a total delight. Numberous proper scares are generated, and there's even a few surprises.
Where Magic held back, this film goes full-bore, exploring all the horror possibilties of creepy dolls from every possible angle. It's encouraging that despite the film failing to break out, James Wan didn't give up on creepy dolls, bringing the whole thing full circle with Annabelle.
1. Dead of Night (1945)
There is no disputing the greatest creepy doll movie of them all - Dead of Night is an oldie, but it's one of the all-time goodies. It also represents another trope underserved by modern cinema - the British horror anthology, of which it is arguably the best ever example.
Several tales of varying creepiness are told by guests at a country house, and one of them is the original 'possessed ventriloquist doll' story from which all other 'possessed ventriloquist doll' stories derive. Screen legend Michael Redgrave (Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, The Dam Busters) stars as the unstable ventriloquist who may or may under the influence of his evil dummy.
In a film filled with nightmarish tales, The Ventroloquist's Dummy is the most nightmarish, and a clear influence on both Magic and Dead Silence. It was also an influence on numerous television explorations of the trope, most effectively in the 1962 Twilight Zone episode, The Dummy.
But nothing comes close to Dead of Night.
* Do you like films about creepy dolls? Which ones? Should I have given Charles Band some love here? Did you think your toys were going to kill you? Comment below!
