Slasher dolls and killer robots: 13 movies to watch if you loved M3GAN
From Chucky to Annabelle, and Deadly Friend to Chopping Mall, there's no shortage of films about pint-sized playthings from hell and good robots gone bad
Film Features Dolls
Clockwork from left: Chucky in a scene from the film Child’s Play, 1988. (Photo: United Artists/Getty Images); Annabelle Comes Home (Image: Warner Media); Dolly Dearest (Screenshot: Lionsgate/YouTube); Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend (Screenshot: Warner Bros./YouTube); The Boy (Screenshot: STX Entertainment/YouTube) Graphic: The A.V. Club
Dolls and dummies live so deep in the uncanny valley that horror films have been playing with them since the 1920s. In more recent decades, movies like Child’s Play and Annabelle and the brand new M3GAN have tapped into a mainstream appetite for watching your G.I. Joe get up of its own free will and stab you to death.
To its credit, M3GAN toys with the “killer doll” subgenre, using a sci-fi edge to amplify its commentary on technology and social media providing a facsimile of friendship. If you watched M3GAN and fell in love, this chronological list of doll-themed slashers as well as killer robot movies will tell you where you should head next.
20 Comments
No “Trilogy of Terror” with Karen Black??? C’moooooooon!
How is Trilogy of Terror not on this list?
That was my first thought.
Me Three!
Missing “Devil Doll”.
“I want some ham!”
“I know what wine is!”
“The sawdust in your stomach will explode!”
“A dummy? Drinking wine?” “Spodieodie?!”
I mean, if we’re going all out here, Black Devil Doll from Hell.
That’s why I was confused on that first entry. Apparently there are two entries in the subgenre of “camp black-and-white British horror about a living ventriloquist dummy named Hugo”.
Hugo must be a popular name for evil dolls.
I’m really surprised nobody ever incorporated this Hugo into a horror movie:https://www.samstoybox.com/toys/Hugo.htmlEven as a kid, I found this toy kind of creepy.
I would get one of those. But only so I could hide it around the house to scare the missus.I’m fun to live with like that.
Oddly enough, that’s exactly what my older brother did with his Hugo.
I used to freak out my brother with a time-out doll.
“13 ads for Megan disguised as articles”
The Boy was terrifying.
Why is there a picture of Jared Kushner there