âThe Creepy Dollâ is a 2011 indie horror movie from filmmaker PJ Woodside. It can be found on Amazon Prime, and was found by me on a lazy October sick day.
It would be simple to trash “The Creepy Doll.” The acting is terrible, the budget $0, and the film itself has more of a home video feel to it than a serious indie horror. I laughed out loud a handful of seconds in when the credit of Big Biting Pig Productions displayed on the screen. Even the title is amateurish at best, and not good in a world driven by search engine results. Nevertheless, something made me watch it from start to finish and at the end, I actually found myself not totally hating it.
Kate and Jason are newlyweds, moving into their first home together. It is revealed that the house has a history that goes back to Jasonâs childhood. Kate (Kristine Renee Farley) is pregnant, and as such, carrying a great deal of stress and anxiety. She has doubts about Jason (Justin Veazey), jealousy over his former girlfriend (Jessica Dockrey) who is back in the picture, and reservations about leaving big city Atlanta for a small quiet town. She reveals a collection of porcelain dolls, with one particularly disturbing looking one being the focal point of her throng. âWhatâs the deal with that thing?â Jason asks when Kate displays the abhorrent marionette. âSheâs my guardian doll.â
As much as I donât want to admit it, PJ Woodside knows what she is doing behind the scenes. The camera angles she chooses work to deliver on a tension building front. There are a handful of jump scares, but none so gratuitous it hinders the overall feeling of anxiety. With the lead character being a paranoid pregnant female, I was reminded of another indie âThe House on Pine Streetâ which I loved. Here we see similar scenes with Kate walking through a schoolyard and seemingly witnessing strange events, and at a dinner party which puts the viewer right in her shoes.
Kate and Jason donât interact like a married couple. Itâs such an awkward pairing theyâre more like two people who just matched on Tinder and are together for the very first time. There is a funny scene where Jason, now paranoid himself over the dolls, thinks Kate is having a conversation with them. All the other characters are bit players and all barely professional. Iâd like to see what PJ Woodside could create if given the appropriate budget and talent to work with.
You never see the dolls doing anything other than looking sinister on their own. And none are out of the ordinary which works well; porcelain dolls generally donât need help being scary and off-putting. The viewer is left with the psychological horror of what exactly is happening with Kate and her dolls. Despite the terrible acting, I stayed watching until the end. I was generally invested in the characters and the story, and how it was set to conclude.
Kudos to PJ Woodside on one of her earlier pieces. Itâs not âThe Shiningâ (far from it) but Iâve seen plenty worse.
