Greta (Lauren Cohan) is a young American woman who takes a job as a nanny in a remote English village, only to discover that the family’s 8-year-old is a life-sized doll that the parents care for just like a real boy, as a way to cope with the death of their actual son 20 years prior. After violating a list of strict rules, a series of disturbing and inexplicable events bring Greta’s worst nightmare to life, leading her to believe that the doll is actually alive.
If you are interested, I talked about this film before here. So yeah, this really is a film. When I heard about it, I just had to see it for myself. There hasn’t been too many doll-based horror films so far so I suppose another one is okay. I haven’t seen any of the Child’s Play (or the “Chucky”) films but I have seen Annabelle (which I thought was okay). The story for this one is of an American woman named Greta (Cohan) taking a job as a nanny for a old rich couple in a remote English village. Once she arrives, she discovers that their 8 year old boy is a life-sized doll in which they care for, pretending like he is a real boy in order to cope with the death of their son. When she chooses not to follow the parents’ rules, a series of strange events begin to occur, leading her to believe that the doll may be alive. I will say that there is more going on in the story than that but I won’t bother to explain any of it because I didn’t quite understand it myself as I found that the story did not make much sense. I won’t spoil anything but I’ll just say that it comes as a surprise when the film gives you one impression and then it suddenly changes without explanation. This change comes via a plot twist that will have you wondering why. The film wasn’t really that good to begin with but the twist just made it worse. The film is pretty much your standard horror film full of weird noises, stuff moving on its own, and things popping up out of nowhere. There’s nothing new there and all of it failed to move me in any way. That was also pretty much what the film could do based on its rating. So this more of a psychological horror than one of the violent/gory ones. I find this kind of ironic since you don’t really need to use your brain while watching this. For the most part, the film was pretty predictable seeing that it follows traditional horror movie logic in that characters will make stupid decisions, people may not be what they seem, and at some point there will be a twist. Knowing this, I found the film to be pretty boring as not much happened (other than what I already mentioned). What certainly didn’t help its case was the bad acting. I wouldn’t fully blame the actors themselves but I would also assign blame to the script. This comes from the bad decisions and their inconsistent logic which just felt weird to me. Greta’s okay with the doll, than she’s not okay, and then she’s okay again? Don’t get me started with the boy’s parents as their part made the least sense to me. The film also gave Greta a subplot about an abusive boyfriend but it just didn’t work and was pointless. Overall, this is just a bad movie with a bad, boring story full of stupid characters. We now have a frontrunner for the worst film of the year.
Score: 3.5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
