AnnaBOY!

I'm the rare geriatric millennial horror fan who genuinely enjoys ALL the Annabelle movies. On one hand, that shouldn't be surprising: they're well-made genre flicks that deeply understand their audience, and they star a killer doll! But on the other, they star a killer doll who, well, doesn't actually do anything.

The great Stacie Ponder has written an outstanding treatise on why Annabelle rocks. The downside, however, of this porcelain queen's success is that once other low budget horror filmmakers figured out that you can make a killer doll movie without even MOVING the main attraction, the overall quality of an already questionable subgenre had nowhere to go but down. These are movies that make Charles Band seem ambitious! 

Sadly, thirteen years into The Shortening, I'm simply running out of doll-based horror. 2015's Robert might well be the last non-Tubi made-for-pennies film I haven't clocked, so we're diving in and hope 2022 brings us a toychest full of more options.

Quick Plot: Meet Paul and Jenny Otto, a fairly awful British couple who casually fire their veteran housekeeper Agatha and bemoan how HARD it is...on them. Their much kinder son Gene is sad to lose such a close presence in his life, but Agatha, our senile but sassy MVP, doesn't go out quietly. She leaves Gene a special gift: Robert, a horrific glassy eyed doll with a history of destroying families. 

It doesn't take long for Robert to unravel the fragile Jenny, a stressed artist already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. If you're hearing echoes of ANOTHER cheaply made evil doll-destroys-frayed-family-without-actually-moving-on-camera movie, your ears do not need cleaning: while Robert definitely owes Annabelle some residuals, diehard fans of Cathy's Curse might be left wondering if this is an unofficial remake. 

I don't have time to go into all the reasons why should see Cathy's Curse (know that it was the very first film I covered here AND that I once introduced a screening of it at the Alamo Drafthouse) because it would be unfair to this, well, not very good variation of it. I SUPPOSE Robert is a better made film than that 1977 Canadian treasure, but honestly, so is that 30 second clip from the time my cat accidentally stepped on my iPhone's video button.

Written and directed by Andrew Jones, a man who has since made three more Robert movies and a barrel of similar looking titles, Robert is, you know, a killer doll movie that does everything it can to never show the doll killing. That wouldn't be a terrible thing if done well (see Annabelle and even the cheaper made Heidi) but when the stuff that DOES happen involves characters auditioning for an off-brand  antidepressant commercial's montage, it's not particularly fun. 

Still, Robert has his charms. Heck, his first act of violence is to repeat Chucky's opening flour footprint move! That's something, right?

High Points

I like a movie that has a kid who isn't the worst. Little Gene doesn't get to do much, but honestly, there's something very refreshing about just how chill he is about having a doll that's threatening the livelihood of anybody that comes in his orbit (and yes, do understand that after a lifetime of watching Charles Band productions get made with smaller budgets even as inflation soars, I am well aware that my standards are very, very low)

Low Points

Seriously: am I supposed to sympathize with an awful upper class couple who fire their long-term nanny and spend the two minutes it takes to make the decision complaining about how it makes THEIR lives hard? I hope not, because as soon as this happened (5 minutes into the movie) I was, and continue to be 100% Team Robert

Lessons Learned

Cursed dolls have a particularly sharp hatred of young women working in their home

Not helping your wife find answers to her mental illness is bad husbandry, but it's still better than cheating

You can't lock an evil spirit in the shed

Rent/Bury/Buy

The phrase "everything is relative" may be cliche, but it's never truer when applied to the evaluation of horror. In the scheme of cinema, Robert is pretty bad. In relation to other horror movies, it's just not very good. But compared to other killer doll films? Probably right in the middle. Compared SPECIFICALLY to non-studio-produced low budget productions? Above average.

Folks, I'm a very particular type of film fan.

Home Is Where the Haunting Is

We haven't had a Shortening yet without evil dolls, and damned if we're going to start now!

Dedicated readers might be curious as to why I've never before used this space to tackle this horror decade's most prominent porcelain villain. Part of may stem from the fact that Annabelle, you know, doesn't actually DO anything. 

It's kind of beautiful, and if you really want to dive deeper into just how grand a dame this toy is, I urge you to read Final Girl blogger Stacie Ponder's brilliant essay on the subject. 

Now obviously, I don't mind a doll that does nothing. Observe my complete adoration with Cathy's Curse and you'll understand that sometimes, a creepy pile of fabric with a face is enough in itself without Chucky-esque one-liners. And the truth is, I've genuinely enjoyed the first two Annabelle movies. So why not continue the journey?

Quick Plot: Beginning just a few minutes following the events of the first Annabelle, Lorraine and Ed Warren have successfully transported the titular doll to their basement of horrors. Locked behind blessed church glass, she sits back and waits.

The Warrens are called out of town to do some ghost hunting, leaving their daughter Judy (last year's Shortening queen, The Bad Seed/The Haunting of Hill House's Mckenna Grace) in the care of kind teenage babysitter Mary Ellen (Jumanji's delightful Madison Iseman). While Mary Ellen was hoping to play some board games and bake a birthday cake for the lonely Judy, her wilder best friend Daniela shows up with other plans. 

And roller skates.

I can't imagine what world we live in where a ten-year-old girl can put on shoes with wheels for the first time in her LIFE and only manage to have one fall around the block. But perhaps the PTSD from the one time I attempted to roller boogie in the 4th grade just still burns.

Anyway, Daniela is eager to explore the Warrens' collection in the hopes of finding some kind of communication line to her recently deceased father. Naturally, she ends up freeing our favorite blond in the process, along with a whole batch of demons, ghosts, and for good measure, CGI werewolves.

Making his directorial debut, Gary Dauberman (who penned all three installments) creates a very stable PG-13 haunted house feel that should come across as a far bigger compliment than it might sounds. While The Conjuring universe has had its highs and lows, the Annabelle series has, for me, been consistently enjoyable. 

Even if the doll doesn't do sh$t.

With Annabelle Comes Home (or Annabelle: Homecoming, as I've been calling it for last year), Dauberman gives us what I affectionally call slumber party horror. Stakes are raised and the cast sells the terror, but at a certain point, the comfort level of (SPOILER ALERT) knowing that your extremely likable, extremely young cast is going to be okay. 

There's a place for hard, cruel horror, and another for spooky jump scares with heart. When done well, that latter spot is a darn good time.

High Points

There was a point early on in Annabelle Comes Home where I worried we'd be following a very dumb and slightly cruel teenager, but one of the nicest things about this film is that its characters are generally nice. It's amazing how far that goes for a film

Low Points

I know there are many real-life people who have issues with the actual Warrens, but fictionally, it's hard to accept that a couple who've spent their lives dealing with supernatural horrors would be so casual as to trust a teenager and a mere deadbolt to supervise their daughter and a house full of evil objects

If you can't nail the design (particularly a CGI one) of a werewolf, think very, very hard about whether it's worth including one in your film

Lessons Learned

The law of Checkhov's inhaler never fails

There's no such thing as enticing pizza in the horror genre

The art of wooing involves rock 'n roll

Rent/Bury/Buy

Annabelle Comes Home isn't groundbreaking, but it's a solid romp that I found incredibly satisfying. As a franchise, it's taken an interesting journey in focusing on adults, children, and now teenagers. I'll be curious to see where it goes next. 

Losers Weepers

It's here! A whole month of posts about vertically challenged villains, forever known as The Shortening. Evil dolls, terrible children, biting insects, Tom Cruises...whatever is small and deadly, we'll tackle it here.

Onward!

Quick Plot: Newly separated Alyson moves her bratty daughter Claire into a bargain home with your typical murdery history. Just a year or so earlier, a young boy killed his parents before ending up in the local asylum. When Claire discovers a ratty doll under a floorboard, it's not long before she begins heading down the same path.

First on her hit list: neighbor Marina Sirtis's cat. 

I'm not going to lie about my bias: when your first victim is feline, I'm not going to be on your victim/villain's side.

Perhaps the hardest hurdle to get over in Finders Keepers is just why anyone should care about Claire's possession-by-doll. Sure, the kid doesn't have the greatest parental role models (we're talking Jaime Pressly and the king of Christmas movies himself, Patrick Muldoon), but it doesn't really excuse the fact that she's a miserable thing from the start. 

At least the doll has a neat look.

Directed by Alexander Yellen (whose career primarily involves cinematography on Asylum Studio films), Finders Keepers feels aggressively mediocre, even with (or maybe, because) it contains a fairly star-studded cast for this caliber of film. Deanna Troy purrs through a thankless cat lady part, Tobin "Jigsaw" Bell gets to give terrible psychiatric advice, and poor Justina Machado has her eyes poked out and body set on fire. 

And the brat keeps going.

High Points

There's a stupid slow motion doll toss that made me unreasonably happy, which tells you how much I was reaching for entertainment in this movie

Low Points

Did I mention how much I hated this kid?

Lessons Learned

I know this sounds crazy, but here me out: in the words of trained professionals, separation and divorce can be hard for a child

Never mess with a strange kid's ugly doll

The shorter your haircut, the longer your makeup will stay on your face

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. This wasn't the high note I was hoping to open The Shortening on, but it does manage to give us BOTH an evil child AND doll, so I guess it gets some kind of half nod. I got this as a long wait on my Netflix disc queue, which felt even less rewarding than I would have liked. 

Second Time Singing the Baby Blues

As I compiled my list of Shortening offerings, I became a little worried. It's not February here at the Doll's House without at least one evil toy, but six years into this blog, it's becoming harder and harder to films of that ilk that I haven't seen, written about, or referenced. Are we nearing the end of dollhood?

Goodness no, and thanks to the beauty of Netflix Instant Watch and Hong Kong, I don't even have to resort to whatever outtakes Charles Band has compiled into a 72 minute excuse for a film. Sifting through Netflix, I was thrilled to come upon today's feature. I mean, just LOOK at that cover!

Quick Plot: An attractive young couple moves into a sprawling and fairly isolated home with no drawbacks (save, for the fact that for whatever reason, their only neighbor is a cheerful homeless man living in a shanty of sorts across the street).  A box from the previous owners includes a creepy little doll wearing a turtleneck, and if we learned nothing from Puppetmaster or From Beyond the Grave, it's that one should never relax around a doll in a turtleneck.

Homeless neighbor across the street warns the couple of omens, but they settle in happily, especially after songwriter Hubby (I never caught his name and IMDB is confusing, so I'll call him what his wife does) finds his inspiration. It's pretty much the best scene of all time. Allow me to set up:

Hubby is hanging upside down from the ceiling, which sort of makes sense from a struggling artist with athleticism point of view. As he swings back and forth, Hubby knocks the Creepy Doll In a Turtleneck onto his piano, where it hits a few notes before landing on the ground. Those notes, my friends, are EVIL.

We don't quite know that yet, and actually, now that I think through the rest of the movie, maybe they're just a byproduct? See, Baby Blues has a lot going on, but it doesn't seem in any hurry to actually deal with it all.

In addition to an EVIL song (it's so evil that it causes one pop star to get into a car accident and another to spill a lot of scotch) co-produced by a Creepy Doll In a Turtleneck, Wifey Tian (but c'mon: let's call her Wifey) becomes pregnant with twins after an amorous evening overseen by the Creepy Doll In a Turtleneck whose eyes bleed. When one child doesn't survive, Wifey is diagnosed with the titular 'baby blues,' postpartem depression that in this case, leads her to treat the Creepy Doll In a Turtleneck Whose Eyes Bleed as if he were her elder baby boy Jimmy.

I have no idea who Baby Blues was made for. In an American theater, it would probably be rated PG-13, although its storyline is far more geared towards adults with career and family worries than the typical Friday night young adult and tween crowd who just want to see some jump scares. There's an odd reluctance to ever REALLY go for darkness, even though there is certainly some horrific subject matter at play.

Thankfully, we're not talking about that OTHER low budget horror film I watched a few years ago also called Baby Blues. That movie made me want to track the filmmaker down and perform Bart Simpson quality prank phone calls on his private line. We're not in that camp.

This Baby Blues is just tonally very strange. Our only real body count comes from the tragedy of a stillborn birth and a few hazy flashbacks about the fates of past residents of the home. There's a genuinely horrific moment involving a baby being dropped from a very high deck, but it's ultimately resolved in a rather easy manner that undercuts its own horror.

Still, we do get a dream sequence that involves an evil child in a tuxedo, and for that, I give this film a passing grade.

High Points

When Wifey is kind of dull, her little bike-riding, punch-giving, wine-drinking, popstar-slamming tomboy sister is KICK. ASS.

Low Points

The general lightness of a movie that seems to want to go darker kept me from loving Baby Blues, although I was always interested in where it was going

Lessons Learned

CPR can pretty easily be achieved by simply beating up a new corpse

Doctors don't lie!

Like all media, Baby Blues teaches us a well-known fact: anytime a woman vomits, she will, within two minutes, discover that she is pregnant

Never doubt the warnings given by the friendly homeless man who just so happens to occupy the shanty across the street

Rent/Bury/Buy

It's hard to recommend Baby Blues because I feel that the majority of horror film fans will be annoyed and disappointed. But there's something strangely charming about such an innocent take on a killer (sorta) doll movie. Viewers who don't require a high body count in their horror may be able to enjoy this for its quirks. I certainly did.

Cathy's Curse aka Cauchemares

As a young teenager, I used to use my good report cards as opportunities to get a gift from Borders. This typically involved me wandering down the horror aisle and picking up a paperback based on the cover. Quite a few featured what I assumed to be a poorly selling QVC doll holding a kitchen knife (possibly purchased as a discounted package in the final minutes of the 3AM sale). These novels were never particularly good, but my lingering pediophobia allowed the stories--usually about single mothers trying to protect their little girls from possession by a mysteriously lost-and-found porcelain doll--to be worth that A in Algebra. 

Cathy’s Curse has the feel of a crappy paperback novel, but minus the hand of a mediocre editor. Made in Quebec in 1977, it’s notable for having the most extreme spray tan you’ve ever seen to coat a film. (I could blame my 13 cent Mill Creek 50 pack edition, but I’m pretty sure this film has never looked good. But you know, it’s kind of like Ryan Seacrest. The first couple times you look at it, you’re completely distracted by the orange glow radiating from the center. Eventually, you realize there are bigger problems before you.) 

Quick Plot: A mother walks out on her husband and daughter (but keeps the son, because, as we’re quite often reminded, “she’s a bitch!”). We never discover why Mama B abandoned half her family, but I assume her potty mouthed husband and creepy doll-and-rabbit-loving daughter had something to do with it. 

Anyway, leftover family unit drives recklessly after the first half but are thwarted by a bunny in the road and die in a horrid car explosion. Not an awful start to what we know will not be a good movie. Flash thirty years or so later, and the surviving son returns home with his new terrible actress of a wife and boring little daughter (don’t worry, she’s about to get much more interesting). A quick backstory of the family follows (“You know and I know that I’ve had a nervous breakdown!”) along with Cathy’s discovery and immediate kinship with a nasty little doll. Before long, Cathy is speaking like Marlena when she was possessed by the devil on Days of Our Lives, calling every woman she sees a bitch/whore/filthy female cow, and playing Let’s Reenact How My Aunt/Possessing Spirit Died/the All Women Are Bitches Accident Game with the less than enthusiastic neighborhood kids. 

Obviously, it only gets better from here. The highlight of the film for me was Roy Witham’s Dickensian caretaker Paul, aKa the coolest babysitter on the block. How much do I love a film that features a little girl and an old British man drinking whiskey and calling a concerned neighbor a “dirty old whore?” A lot. I love it a lot. Especially when said scene concludes with tarantulas, snakes, and whatever else the local pet shop provided crawling over the old man in a scene that feels as stretched as the spider death in Fulci’s The Beyond.

High Points

Any doll with eyes sewn closed gets at least one round of goosebumps from me. 

Little Randi Allen’s clear enjoyment of being allowed to curse in numbers that would make Margaret Cho blush.

Low Points

The doll doesn’t talk. Or move. Or curse. Sigh. I would have traded my Wedding Day Midge to hear “Make us laugh, you filthy bitch!” come out of a porcelain mouth, but alas, no movie is perfect.

Remember the scene in Airplane where the woman whose husband never drinks coffee starts freaking out and screaming “I gotta get out of here” over and over again? That’s basically Beverly Murray’s performance as Cathy’s mentally unstable mother.

The Winning Line:

“Medium? I’d say extra rare piece of shit!”

I now have added to My List of Things To Do In Life Before I Die: Go to psychic, become enraged, and shout these words. Or have a 10 year old daughter and make her do it, because it’s much funnier that way. 

Lessons Learned:

Do not kiss little girls, particularly if their mommies tell you they hate being kissed.

All women are bitches, but dogs that bark are stupid bitches.

Nervous breakdowns are not contagious, but they will eff up your daughter pretty badly.

Alcoholic caretakers make adequate babysitters.

Not a new lesson in horror, but this film does offer further proof that all children with straight blond hair are evil

Rent/Bury/Buy:

Buy Cheap

I watched this as part of Mill Creek’s 50 Chilling Classics pack, a set that I can’t recommend highly enough. The quality is off, but since you’re spending about 15-80 cents on this movie, depending on your purchase, it’s certainly worth a viewing. Don’t expect miracles, but do enjoy a good time.