Rag Doll

After moving into a new house, a woman, her daughter, and new girlfriend try to make the most of the situation which is helped along by the discovery of a rag doll left behind by the previous owner, but when they come to find it's corrupting the daughter must try to stop it.

Overall, this was a pretty fun if formulaic genre effort. One of the finer aspects of this one comes from the wholly effective setup that provides a solid means of establishing the family dynamic for the doll to play with. While we're given a derivative series of family squabbles as a divorced family member tries to move on with a new partner against the child's wishes, this one at least plays with it nicely enough with the interactions between everyone as it sets up how the mother wants to keep the daughter happy while her girlfriend tries to keep the peace. This leads to a nice bit of dramatic tension between everyone where the strain of the situation gives the family just enough conflict with each other that it comes together rather well when the doll can come to life and pit everyone against each other further and leave it to its malicious intentions. That allows the series of doll attacks to be immensely enjoyable with some fun to be had involving it preying upon the family and their friends. Generally resorting to fantastic ambush encounters while eerie laughing plays in the background to highlight its presence, this sets up a fine series of scenes here involving the doll taking out the ex-husband in his car, the stalking of a friend while babysitting, or the attack on the girlfriend where she's pushed down the stairs in front of the mother and daughter. With the whole thing set up to frame the daughter for everything as a means of exacerbating the tension at play here, this brings about some intriguing work as it leads to a radically unconventional finale that features this setup rather nicely which combined makes for a fun enough time here. There are some minor issues to be had with this one. The main factor to be had with this one is the rather familiar and somewhat cliched family drama that takes place here turning this into a generally repetitive genre effort. The new family dynamic at play is pretty much the culprit here where it's way too familiar regarding the daughter being upset by the disruption and lashing out verbally with unconventional outbursts and comebacks while the mother and new girlfriend try to make the situation make sense due to how supposedly out of character these events are. It doesn't help that the blank-faced statements and robotic delivery of these encounters offer the kind of enhanced mindset for that storyline where the atrocious performance is a help in believing this setup. Alongside the lack of violence or gore featured, these here are what bring this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

I'm currently wasting time by looking for and watching as many bad movies as I can.

This one is right up there with the best of the worst movies.

The plot is: a family moves into a new house, they find a creepy doll, the doll kills everyone. That's it.

No plot twists. Nothing to think about.

The kid, Cristal (Kristal?) bugged me. That monotone voice and flat expression struck me as psychopathic which, come to think of it, might be why her Mom blamed her for the murders.

The best part of the movie is the black dress (if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean).

And the doll is creepy.

But is a creepy doll enough to make you want to take seventy-five minutes and thirty-seven seconds out of your life to watch this?

That's a judgment call.

To be fair, I am a big fan of the "so bad, it's good" type of horror movie. That being said, I could hardly find any redeeming quality in this. The only good aspect was the attempt at character development, which was enough to barely make you feel sorry for the characters. The dialogue was mostly weak, even though it tried to capture genuine emotions. The attempts at acting by Ruby Wunna and N. Walters were so bad that it was hard to follow the plot. There was no noticeable chemistry between Chrissie Wunna and Danielle Scott, even though their relationship was a big part of the plot. I didn't see any reason that the so-called "doll" had to be larger than most children. There was no logic at all for how it chose its victims. I could barely finish watching it because it was so boring.

This movie isn't that bad, and certainly not as bad as the current rating would indicate. The doll is pretty creepy, so they definitely get points for that. I also appreciate a low budget movie that can entertain you with basically just a single set (the house). I really think this film has the potential to be a 7+ instead of the 5 I gave it, but there are some issues....

• 3 of the characters are related in real life. The main character, the boy that plays the doll, and the daughter. They should have cast someone else as the daughter because this girl obviously has no acting experience or training whatsoever. All of her lines are monotone and without any emotion whatsoever.

• It really breaks down at the end. I don't want to give any spoilers, but there are scenes that don't make sense, and it was like they needed to piece them together as good as they could. For example, I think the mother needed to end up behind the daughter in one of the last scenes, so they have this ridiculous shot sequence that makes her end up on the other side.

• Pretty much none of the killings make sense. They kind of bring in characters, and once they've kind of run their course in the movie, the doll will kill them, maybe literally so they didn't have to worry about writing any more dialog for them.

A little more thought and this film could have been much better, and for all of the bad parts, if you're a fan of B movies, I think this one is worth the watch!