Masahiro Mori thought he was pretty darned clever when he coined the term “uncanny valley” in 1970, but horror fans knew all about it for years. The theory goes that the more realistic an artificial creation becomes, the more revolting it becomes. Masahiro Mori was referring to robots that look kinda human (but not quite). But if you’ve ever seen a creepy doll – or, more to the point, a creepy doll movie – you’ve probably experienced this phenomenon firsthand.
Creepy dolls are, well, creepy. They look kinda human but their glassy stares and tendency to murder people simply prevent them from ever being “cute.” Horror movies have been playing with this phenomenon for the better part of a century, and they aren’t giving up anytime soon (Annabelle, anyone?). But not all creepy doll movies are created equal. Some of them fall pretty flat, actually. Have you ever seen Demonic Toys? Yeah… you don’t actually have to do that.
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So for the sake of creepy doll enthusiasts the world over (you know who you are), CraveOnline presents our list of The 11 Creepiest Creepy Doll Movies. Only the most malevolent toys in movie history need apply. How many have you seen?
Slideshow: The 11 Creepiest Creepy Doll Movies
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 11 Creepiest Creepy Doll Movies
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11. Toy Story (1995)
John Lasseter's groundbreaking family movie about lovable walking, talking toys didn't shy away from how creepy they can be. When the cowboy doll Woody (Tom Hanks) finds himself in the home of a mean kid named Sid, he learns that the child's toys have been mutilated into grotesqueries. Eventually they band together to give the kid nightmares. Sure, they're good toys at heart, but they can be vicious when they want to be.
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10. The Saw Franchise (2004-2010)
The torture porn franchise Saw has a ridiculously complicated plot line, and crafty Rube Goldberg death traps, but its horrors are actually disturbingly basic if you think about them. The victims are simply forced to mutilate themselves to survive (few of them actually do), and to top it all off the serial killer Jigsaw speaks to them through this cheap scare (but creepy-ass) doll. It's a design that would give any small child the heebie-jeebies, but it doesn't actually do anything. It just rides in on a tricycle and talks spooky to you. That's scary enough to make the list, but not scary enough to rank very highly on it.
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9. Small Soldiers (1998)
Joe Dante's strange Toy Story knockoff Small Soldiers starred Tommy Lee Jones as the leader of a team of action figures given sentience by classified military technology. That would be bizarre enough, but then they go all Doctor Frankenstein on a bunch of Barbie dolls (sorry, "Gwendy" dolls), warping their plastic bodies, adding real knives and enlisting them to tie up a teenaged Kirsten Dunst in her bedroom. Yikes!
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8. Dolls (1987)
Stuart Gordon may be best known for his H.P. Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dagon, but he also directed this cult classic about a family trapped in a house with homicidal dolls. Dolls is perhaps most famous for its poster, featuring a creepy doll holding its eyes in its hands, but it also deserves to be remembered more for its eerie childlike tone and genuine chills.
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7. The Puppetmaster Franchise (1989-2012)
From the tiny monster-obsessed mind of Charles Band (who also came up with Dolls, incidentally) came the long-running Puppetmaster franchise, featuring homicidal marionettes with gimmicky super villain powers like the ability to barf up leeches and drill into your head. Scariest of all: Blade, a ghost-eyed terror in a black fedora with knives for hands. The first three Puppetmaster films are b-movie treasures, but the franchise peters out into nonsense after a while. Stick with the original trilogy.
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6. Dead of Night (1945)
One of the most influential horror movies was this anthology of terror, in which the tenants of a country inn tell tales of their own personal brushes with the supernatural. Most of the stories are great (not so much the silly golfing episode), but the finale - which stars Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist whose dummy may or may not be alive, but is definitely malevolent - is the best of the bunch. Redgrave is spectacular and the dummy is frightening as hell.
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5. The Conjuring (2013)
James Wan's exceptional spook story The Conjuring is all the more interesting for coincidentally having an evil doll in it. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga star as husband-and-wife paranormal investigators, and although the plot is about a family tormented by a vengeful spirit, a doll named "Annabelle" from one of their earlier adventures steals the film with a petrifying prologue. We know she'll come back into the picture eventually, but when? WHEN?!
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4. Magic (1978)
The late Lord Richard Attenborough was best known for directing epics like A Bridge Too Far and Gandhi, but between those two blockbusters he found time to make the impossibly eerie Magic, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist whose dummy has a life - and a bloodlust - of its own. It's material that had been done before (see: #6), but never better, and never with this much soul.
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3. The Child's Play Franchise (1988-2013)
When most people think of killer dolls, they think of Chucky, the "Good Guy" doll possessed by the spirit of a homicidal maniac, voiced with giddy glee by Brad Dourif. The Child's Play movies gave a whole generation of children nightmares, and they're all pretty danged entertaining. Bride of Chucky is probably the most fun, but Child's Play 2 and Curse of Chucky are probably the scariest.
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2. Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Dan Curtis's Trilogy of Terror is one of the most famous horror anthologies ever made, and it's entirely due to the third installment, in which Karen Black fends off an alarmingly scary Zuni fetish doll in her apartment. The story is called "Amelia," but it's based off of Richard Matheson's classic short story Prey, which every creepy doll enthusiast absolutely has to read.
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1. Poltergeist (1982)
Tobe Hooper brought scary movies to suburbia in the 1982 classic Poltergeist. The result was one of the best haunted house films. Period. And the highlight was the creepiest doll in movie history, a freaky-ass clown that was the stuff of scarring nightmares even before it came alive and tried to strangle little kids. Parents, don't buy toys like this for your children. Unless you want them to grow up and make creepy doll movies, that is...
