The Doll

I liked this movie. Yes, The Doll is scary. Valeria Lukyanova is great in this movie, but honestly so is Anthony del Negro. The outwardly cold psychopath that Natasha turns out to be, in the movie is placed into the context of two ordinary kids who live together. Anthony goes through a breakup, gets dumped, and Natasha is pretty much terrifying. This movie is sort of like a serious attempt at making the Movie 43, with Emily Rose, into a horror film, if the lead actress was'The Human Barbie'. I think that The Doll might be the beginning of something wonderful! I'll tell you how I take my coffee, with Valeria Lukyanova in it.

With the exclusion of Chucky, I've always found tales revolving around creepy possessed/supernatural dolls to be quite scary, be it in text or on the screen. Dead Silence by James Wan (the Wan and only) is one of my favorites and the famous namesake of Anabelle was in my opinion the best and most horrifying feature of the film. Therefore, after the Netflix buzz around the new Sabrina film, I was quite excited that the first two titles were also available, so I could watch them in proper order.

The vast majority of features in The Doll are truly great. The story is interesting, compelling and suspenseful. The pace is right on the spot from the exposition and build up, through the overture and to excellent final plot twist (which succeeded in catching me completely off guard despite it being rather cliché). The antagonist is terrifying despite rather sloppy CGI (which is only apparent enough to be noticeable during the final scenes). The scenes are well made and compelling. The characters are authentic, realistic and relatable and the acting is professional and on the spot despite being less than impressive. Even the soundtrack is awesome.

On the other hand, I couldn't ignore the less enjoyable features, especially the vast amounts of all too familiar clichés, some of which had been specifically taken from the "The Conjuring" anthology. Additionally, there's the exaggerated use of cheap jump scares, despite the fact that they were well executed and absolutely achieved their goal of making me jump in my seat. Also, I personally found the gory parts to be completely unnecessary, not being a fan of gore and excessive amounts of blood for their own sakes. Some films are based on those features and are made specifically for fans of gore, but this one isn't and has absolutely no reason to attempt to be. However, the worst feature of the film is by far the complete lack of logic and realism in some of the scenes, all for the sake of fitting the plot. Like a guy suffering multiple deadly stab wounds only to shake it off when necessary, then collapsing exhausted when the plot needs him to. A very amateurish feature in a film that's otherwise anything but.

All in all, The Doll is an excellent film which for me delivered everything I hoped it would, and then some. While not a masterpiece it's good enough to be considered great and one of the best Horror films I've watched this year (and by far the best Indonesian Horror film I've watched to date, though I haven't watched that many). I can only hope the next two titles of the trilogy are as entertaining and terrifying.

I dropped the ball a tad, this is the first movie of The Doll trilogy and not realizing I went and watched the last part Sabrina (2018) first. My bad! However based on this I get the impression that's not really an issue as they appear to be independent stories with recurring characters.

Now regarding Sabrina it was flawed but oddly competent stuff and not the silly killer doll movie I expected, The Doll is very very similar and in many regards almost the same movie. It is however almost the same movie but on a lower budget and it shows.

It tells the story of a supposedly haunted doll that gets brought into the new home of a young couple, you can probably work out how this plays out.

I've been watching a fair few Indonesian movies lately and though not groundbreaking I've actually enjoyed them, they're not what you'd expect at all and seem to be a blend of western and eastern methods of film making.

The Doll is hardly original and some parts look really quite terrible, however it's a passable enough effort and Sara Wijayanto shines as franchise recurring character Ms.Laras.

If you're new to Indonesian cinema The Doll franchise is a harmless place to start and I'm now looking forward to watching the 2nd movie to complete the trilogy.

The Good:

Some creepy moments

Sara Wijayanto

The Bad:

Some really quite bad cgi

Has its fair share of flaws and cliches

After moving into a new house, a man and his wife looking to settle down in a new neighborhood after his promotion finds themselves continually coming upon a strange doll from his job, and when they discover the strange secret behind it calls upon a spiritual healer to save themselves.

This one might be somewhat formulaic but still has some enjoyable elements. The film does really well with the idea of building up what is really wrong with the doll and whether it's alive or not. The opening scene of the children recounting their history with the doll and how it continually reappeared around the house before attempting to injure the son sets the stage for the later scenes of the couple encountering the object. Based on the intriguing idea of coming into their lives through his job when he destroys the sacred tree, the supernatural action that results from this setup offers some fine chills here. From her continually being spooked by strange noises or the wind manipulating doors around them to the devilishly creepy game of hide-and-seek it continually seems to want to play, these scenes manage to offer up some genuinely thrilling moments. The thrills are no less intense once the film brings in the spiritual healer. There are some great scenes here that rightfully encourage her into the story, as the spirit attacking her while taking a bath or during their attempt to sleep at night despite both instances having found nothing attacking her while checking up on what's happening are given genuine and logical cause for concern. The rituals that are performed during the communication session provides a great starter for the occur later on at the house where there's the introduction of the possession angle. Targeting the mediums' young daughter as a playmate or coercing friends to commit harm to themselves signals the start of the more terrifying actions in the house such as the bats attacking the couple to the spirit targeting and then possessing the wife in order to launch several gruesome actions all in the name of revenge. The exorcism that follows is just as enjoyable and has a lot to like about it, which along with the fine gore in the bloody kills gives the film plenty of positive points. There are some pretty big flaws with the film. Among its main issues is that most of the scares here, while generating a fine horror atmosphere and come off well in concept, just seem wholly familiar and routine in execution. The idea of the cursed doll creating terror by opening locked doors, slamming windows or breathlessly whispering in the darkness do manage to provide some fantastic horror ideas only because that's how the majority of the genre's films work. Also not helping these scenes is the absolutely awful and laughably bad CGI work, which reduce many supposedly chilling scenes into obvious CGI-rendered sequences. These issues are rather problematic and troublesome overall. Still, the biggest problem in the film is the overall lagging story. This rambles on far longer than it really should, introducing plot-points that either doesn't need to be there or just rambles on way too much in the finale. Overall, there are a few flaws that do hold this one back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

I thought that the beginning was meh but from the middle to the end, it was very good for a low budget movie!