DollGraveyard

Doll Graveyard (2005)

The movie starts in 1905 where we see an abusive father accidentally kill his daughter, Sophia, and bury her in the backyard with her dolls. Fast forward to the present to the family living in the house. The youngest, a boy named Guy, collects action figures and has no friends. When his sister has a party and Guy is teased the dolls come to life to help him, sort of. The Dolls start to attack and kill anyone they can get to and the spirit of Sophia possesses Guy. So really it isn’t that helpful.

Yeah it is another cheesy Doll movie from producer/director Charles Band. This time instead of hiring another director to make it he takes the helm himself, and it shows. The plot is tight and gets right to the dolls after giving us a very brief back-story with the little girl and her father. This is important because it sets up the rest of the movie. Then we get a lot of dolls running around scaring the crap out of people, though they don’t have much of a body count (more on that later). There is some choppy editing and the movie seems to run out of either plot or more likely money because things seemed rushed at the end. But instead of trying to use some filler or exposition that would have killed the pacing I’m glad that Band just finished it. Oh and there is a fun little twist at the end that uses some nifty old school camera work to create the illusion. Both of these last two are some of what I was referring to when I said it shows that Band was in the director’s chair. He does know how to make a low budget movie and make it fun.

Doll Graveyard is a low budget horror movie made in 2005 with practical effects. Just think about that for a minute. They don’t use any digital work to animate the dolls, which of course means we get some silly stuff with someone “peaking” them around door corners and over the back of furniture. But damn it that works. There are 4 dolls in the movie, a typical baby doll, some kind of African native, a German solider with the point helmet, and a Samurai. Sadly we only get a couple of kills (as I mentioned earlier) but both are funny, inventive, and practical. There is a German helmet to the groin and a miniature spear to the eye. So yeah some good times are had.

You either dig these kinds of movies or you don’t. Personally I have fun with them and enjoy turning off my brain for an hour or so for some goofy fun. This is a pretty good outing from the man who has brought us some of the best and worst that the killer doll/puppet/toy genre has to offer. I’d say it was worth checking out. It comes on a triple feature with Demonic Toys 2 and Dangerous Worry Dolls. Check out the Echo Bridge Home Entertainment site for more details.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer