Dr Sandra Mills, Associate Researcher in the Faculty of Arts, Cultures and Education at the University of Hull, charts the history of creepy dolls in cinema from Annabelle to M3gan.
From Longlegs (2024) to M3GAN (2022) to Annabelle Comes Home (2019), creepy dolls are eerily at home on the big screen. Their cinematic history can be traced back to The Doll’s Revenge (1907) in which a young boy witnesses his previously destroyed sister’s doll reassemble itself, before tearing him apart and devouring him.
Over the course of the 20th century, cinematic dolls became more aggressively homicidal and the 1980s saw a significant shift in the killer toy sub-genre of horror cinema. Previously governed by puppets and ventriloquist dummies, as seen in Dead of Night (1945) and Magic (1978), in the eighties, the horror output spotlighted malevolent dolls, as can be seen in Curtains (1983) and Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984).
It was the latter part of the decade though, specifically the release of Dolls (1987) and Child’s Play (1988), that really won over horror fans.
Dolls is a somewhat unique film in that the other-worldly dolls it spotlights play the part of both antagonist and hero. The suggestion that these dolls possess a morality – however erroneous that morality may be – adds an additional dimension to the killer doll archetype presented to genre fans so far.
Indeed, Dolls actively encourages the viewer to favour these murderous dolls over their human victims. The transgressions these mortals commit, including theft and parental neglect, make them seemingly worthy of this unique form of punishment.
These dolls are not the glossy, mass-produced figures of Child’s Play. Instead they are humans metamorphosed into dolls as penance for their indiscretions. There is an inherent sentimentality to Dolls, echoes of which can be found in Annabelle (2014), Robert (2015) and The Boy (2016).
Dolls of the 2000s
Child’s Play was the first instalment in the “living doll” sub-genre’s most prevalent and durable cinematic franchise – Chucky. Charles Lee Ray, nicknamed “Chucky”, is a serial killer who moves his life-force into a doll, and persistently attempts to transfer his soul from the toy to a mortal body.
The Chucky films span five decades and six direct cinematic sequels alongside a TV series and film reboot. And a new Chucky film is anticipated in 2026.
In the 2000s, cinema-goers were gripped by haunted house horror, as seen in The Others (2001) and Paranormal Activity (2007) and exorcism horror, as seen in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and The Last Exorcism (2010).