Let’s get one thing perfectly clear before we begin. This movie is total garbage with very few redeeming qualities. It’s cheap, thoughtless, and completely devoid of any real promise. In previous entries of this long running series we have had cursed household objects but this time around we have a toy. A dollhouse to be exact. Of course the dollhouse is the likeness of the titular house and of course it wreaks all sorts of havoc on this unsuspecting family.
We open with a newly mixed family moving into a house the father just finished building. As we are told later, it’s built upon the site of another house and the only thing that was kept of the old one is the fireplace. Bill Martin is the father, played by Robin Thomas (Jade, Halloweentown 1 &2). He has two kids, Todd and Jessica. The eldest, Todd, is a rebellious jock type. He spends much of his time picking on his new stepbrother Jimmy. Jessica is a happy and seemingly well-adjusted young girl that is the first to really understand what’s happening here. We also have Claire, Bill’s new wife, mother of Jimmy and stepmother to Todd and Jessica. It’s a typical blended family of the times. Claire’s husband died in war, while Bill’s ex lives in the opposite side of the country. All the kids have a longing for their other parent. Jimmy idolizes the memory of his solider father and constantly compares Bill to a ghost. Meanwhile Todd and Jessica rarely get to speak with their mother.
It’s strange but they never really tell you what either of the parents do for a living. I guess you’re supposed to assume Bill is in construction or architecture. Whatever the case maybe, soon after moving in, Bill discovers a dollhouse in the barn. It’s old and dusty but when the bike he plans to give his daughter for her birthday gets destroyed he decides to clean it up and give the dollhouse as a gift instead. Almost immediately things get weird. His daughter begins to feel ill, a live tarantula falls out of the piñata, and his wife begins having sexual fantasies about his teenage son. Then there’s Bill’s prophetic dreams, which we find out he has had since childhood. We learn this when he details how he knew about the fire that eventually killed his parents before it happened. Any astute horror fan can tell you that this simply means there will be a house fire before the film is over.
We also end up meeting Bill’s sister Marla and her biker husband Tobias. The two of them are into the occult and realize early on that this dollhouse is trouble. They end up taking one the small cloth dolls that came with it and attempting to do some kind of spell on it. To be honest I wasn’t really sure what exactly they were doing. Frankly I’m not so sure the writers knew either.
By the time the film ends, we have had a bug that comes back to life and crawls into the son’s ear, a young woman that gets set on fire, and a fireplace that is a portal to some other realm that is populated by some of the cheesiest looking demons you will ever see. Basically this film is an all-around mess. Oh and let’s not forget the rotting ghost of the wife’s dead husband trying to convince his son to commit murder. If you’re looking for something to watch and have literally watched almost every other horror movie in existence then maybe give this a go. Other than that, just do yourself a favor and skip it.
The Savage Cinephile 