Deadly Playthings

Director Mark Polonia has made a lot of fun, low/no budget horror films over the last 30+ years. Unfortunately, Deadly Playthings is not one of them.

From the acting to the almost complete lack of special effects the film is uninspired, unoriginal and just not very good. It feels like something that was made for the sake of making it and that's about it.

With the acting skills of a child's school nativity play, this is painful to watch.

I must say that the title of this movie suggested something good, but then when I watched it. I was astonished by the extraordinarily terrible acting, the completely poor script, the inept direction and the overall feel. It has all the characteristics of an elementary school play with no horror at all, just a sort of mildly creepy story.

The in-car scenes are shot inside a stationary car, but we are meant to believe that the car is going along the road.

I was so tempted to stop watching after 10 minutes or so, but stayed until the end, hoping it would get better, but no, it is a movie only worth mentioning due to it being the worst effort I have watched in many years.

The IMDb rating is 1.9/10 I would give this 0.9/10 as it clearly had a very tiny or zero budget.

After moving into a new house, a husband and wife grow concerned about their daughter's strange attachment to a doll found at the house, and when they realize the former owner accidentally placed souls inside for a malevolent demon to feed on must try to stop it from succeeding.

This one ended up being a solid enough effort. Among the better aspects found here is a wholly intriguing take on the traditional killer doll formula that's presented in the first half. There's a lot to like with the idea of the girl coming off as a conduit and being able to channel spirits into a doll that later serves as the reason for the haunting in present-day and gives this a rather fun opening with that being put into practice and haunting the doll. Once they move in, the slow-burn horror of their lives inside the house being turned upside down by the discovery of the doll and how that leads to greater danger once the daughter bonds with it as this is done without the knowledge of what's really going on with the doll. This brings out the film's really entertaining second half where it becomes much more than a typical haunted house effort where the doll uses its powers to start toying with them. The physical attacks on the parents are rather fun and are used to give plenty of weight to the idea of the doll's true powers. This is greatly enhanced not only by the idea of the doll continually returning but also the really fun backstory that brings a wholly different dimension to what's going on as this takes the film away from being about them fighting with a supposedly haunted doll to having to battle a supernatural demon for their daughters' soul. This is a fun switch and adds some weight to the finale, overall making for enough positives to hold this one up. The film does have a few minor issues here. One of the biggest overarching problems is the fact that there's very little in the film's lack of explanation for everything. The whole concept of the family moving in and suddenly confronting strange interactions and behavior is never explained, what caused those to start and it becomes even more confusing when the finale makes the haunted house storyline irrelevant. This one could've gotten more out of the connection between the girls' connection to the doll that she left behind which makes no sense for the attachment she had with it and how it's been there all along when she could've gone back. The other real issue to be had here is an obvious and rather cheesy tone that carries throughout here. That's mostly from the special effects, from the rather over-the-top computer graphics to showcase the transference of the souls of the other ghosts around her into the main doll which looks incredibly silly and goofy. As well, the tendency to slow-down into really dragged-out slow-motion shots during the scenes with the ghost out along the world looks somewhat laughable as the significance highlighting it on-screen goes the opposite way the more it happens, meaning it could've been toned back a bit. The final form of the demonic entity looks unfinished and maybe needed an extra pass to look better, combining together to lower this one somewhat.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

I'm a mega Polonia fan but this one was just lacking. No comic relief, no stars, no eye candy. The story was kind of weak but the entire cast was awful. Titus Himmelberger was on a Kirkendall/Carpenter level of bad. Thankfully Kirkendall and James Carolina were only in this one for a few minutes. I wouldn't recommend this one but am anxious to watch the next Polonia film in hopes it will help me forget about this one.