“The Creepy Doll” 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 Jason’s 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. “What’s the deal with that thing?” Jason asks when Kate displays the abhorrent marionette. “She’s my guardian doll.”
As much as I don’t 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 “The House on Pine Street” 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 don’t interact like a married couple. It’s such an awkward pairing they’re 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. I’d 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 don’t 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. It’s not “The Shining” (far from it) but I’ve seen plenty worse.
