‘Poltergeist’ (1982)
This is a true story. When I was 7 years old, my parents let me watch “Child’s Play.” They had incredibly lax – perhaps, in some opinions, borderline negligent – standards for the media I was allowed to consume. Pretty much as long as a film didn’t have any especially graphic sex scenes, I was allowed to watch it. And that included violent horror films in which a possessed doll goes after a kid around my age.
When the credits rolled I put on a brave face. I was proud of my affinity for horror films and didn’t want my dad to think I’d been rattled by some silly doll. But “Child’s Play” broke me. Because waiting in my room was my Kid Sister doll, a Chucky-sized toy of cloth and plastic with an artificially sweet, dimpled smile. I even had the redheaded varietal, cheeks spotted with freckles, and outfitted in a pair of striped blue overalls. To my 7-year-old brain, she looked remarkably like my tormenter.
My dad knew I was terrified and was determined to get the truth out of me. The next evening, for reasons that will be forever beyond my understanding, he thought it would be funny to clandestinely sit my Kid Sister doll in my little orange rocking chair so that I’d walk out to find her waiting for me in the living room. With a knife taped to her hand. On the one hand, I’ve grown up to be a ravenous cinephile with respectable film literacy; on the other, I’m a 30-something woman who’s scared of the dark. And dolls.
“Annabelle: Creation” opens Friday, Aug. 11. Please, Hollywood: Enough with the creepy doll movies. I’m running out of therapists. And based on these six movies, you’ve tortured us enough.
‘The Conjuring’ (2013)
Annabelle plays a minor role in “The Conjuring,” but the haunted doll’s handful of scenes left such a dark impression that she became a kind of movie mascot and got her own spin-off series. She’s left in the care of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (real-life quacks, but they make for good horrormovie characters as played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). But even they, seasoned demonologists with a knack for the occult, have a hard time keeping Annabelle’s evil at bay.
‘Dolls’ (1987)
If ever on a dark and stormy night you find yourself in an old house stacked floor to ceiling with hundreds of creepy dolls: Run. As ever is the case with horror movies, that life advice is obvious to everyone but the victims in Stuart Gordon’s kitschy classic, who fall one by one to an army of possessed, porcelain-faced monsters. Ballerinas and jesters, nutcrackers and teddy bears – no childhood favorite is left unscathed and utterly ruined.
First of all, I question the fitness of parents who would buy a child-size clown doll this creepy for their kid – and that’s even before it gets possessed by vengeful spirits. What’s more, the clown actually tried to kill the kid! At least, that’s the legend. The story goes that in the scene where Robbie is being strangled by the killer clown, the child actor, Oliver Robins, actually started to choke until producer (and rumored secret director) Steven Spielberg stepped in to save the day. Have a doll like this around on the set of a movie called “Poltergeist,” and you’re just asking for it to get possessed.
‘Trilogy of Terror’ (1975)
If you caught this made-for-television anthology film when it originally aired on ABC, chances are the final segment,
My own trauma aside, “Child’s Play” is a legitimately scary movie when it easily could have been insurmountably silly – after all, it is about a serial killer using a voodoo spell to transfer his soul into a talking doll. The creepy animatronics and practical effects have staying power but the film’s ace in the hole is brilliant character actor, and voice of Chucky, Brad Dourif, who never met a villain he didn’t nail. It’s because of him that a little freckled plastic doll entered the horrormovie hall of infamy (and the Halloween mask aisle) alongside Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.