These movies also have doll(s) as their primary source of horror.
Annabelle: Creation has hit Indian shores and if you are a horror fan, chances are you might end up watching the latest installment of The Conjuring series. There is something about dolls that when you look at them closely for a while, they stop being cute and begin to look hideous instead. Try looking at one in limited light and you’ll know what I am talking about. And Hollywood knows this. They have been making movies on creepy dolls for decades. So, before you head to watch Annabelle: Creation, you can check out others movies that also have dolls as the source of horror and fear in the story.
Dead Silence
This one comes from the stable of one of the most prolific horror filmmakers of this millennium, James Wan, who is also known for Saw, Insiduous and The Conjuring series. Dead Silence is the story of a ventriloquist who took offence when a boy pointed towards her moving mouth and said that she is fooling children. Long after her time, she is still haunting and terrorising those who she thinks are responsible for her death. It is downright scary film which more than makes up for its paper-thin plot.
Child’s Play
Considered by many as the definitive creepy doll film, Child’s Play stills inspires terror among those who were children then and watched it. It started the Child Play franchise and also may have started the modern trend of creepy doll films by spawning a series of imitators. A man transfers his soul into an innocent looking doll and starts murdering people. None of the later films match up to the original and it remains a horror classic.
Magic
This is not exactly horror but might be scarier than the other movies in the list. Directed by the great Richard Attenborough, it stars Sir Anthony Hopkins, then a strikingly good-looking young man, in the lead role. Hopkins in the movie has a disturbing relationship with his ventriloquist and is scary in a psychological way and its realism is what makes it terrifying, the fact that everything that happens in the movie is actually possible.
The Boy
In The Boy, a nanny is hired to care for a life-sized porcelain doll which is considered as family by an elderly couple. Don’t laugh for there is nothing funny about this film. The doll has a life of its own and when the couple leave, the nanny discovers this to her horror.
Saw
In Saw, the real source of terror wasn’t a doll and there was a sick, twisted and brilliant mind behind it. But the doll widely called Jigsaw like the man behind it, anyway became the iconic symbol of the film and the series forever. This film was directed by James Wan and made him a huge name overnight. It was an unexpected success and spawned several sequels.
