Evil doll movies transform toys, puppets and seemingly harmless childhood objects into sources of fear. These films may feature possessed dolls, killer toys, haunted puppets, cursed objects or dolls controlled by supernatural forces and malicious human beings. The subgenre overlaps with supernatural horror, slashers, psychological horror and occult cinema, with stories ranging from Gothic tales to modern killer-doll franchises. Dolls are especially effective horror figures because their familiar human appearance can become deeply unsettling when they move, speak or act independently. This list collects classic, cult and lesser-known evil doll horror movies in which dolls, toys or puppets play a central role in the terror.
Top People in Evil Doll Movies
People with the most distinct titles in this list, updated automatically.
John Form has found the perfect gift for his expectant wife, Mia - a beautiful, rare vintage doll in a pure white wedding dress. But Mia's delight with Annabelle doesn't last long. On one horrific night, their home is invaded by members of a satanic cult, who violently attack the couple. Spilled blood and terror are not all they leave behind. The cultists have conjured an entity so malevolent that nothing they did will compare to the sinister conduit to the damned that is now... Annabelle.
Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a doll maker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the doll maker's possessed creation—Annabelle.
The story concerns an actor who is unhappy with life and decides to separate from his body and integrate his mind into a doll. When his body dies, a group of characters search the countryside to find the doll.
Perpetually picked on and endlessly neglected Sybil Pittman finds little joy in her life...except for her massive doll collection that has grown to perverse proportions! Every day, Sybil locks herself in her basement, broadcasting her doll restoration vlog all by herself, that is until the remnants of a mysterious doll - the dreaded "Baby Oopsie" comes into her life! After carefully restoring the doll, Sybil comes to realize that the tiny terror is exacting revenge on her oppressors, mercilessly murdering them one by one. And while Sybil finds herself enjoying Baby Oopsie's bloody brand of ven...
After a vintage Chucky doll turns up at a suburban yard sale, an idyllic American town is thrown into chaos as a series of horrifying murders begin to expose the town’s hypocrisies and secrets. Meanwhile, the arrival of enemies — and allies — from Chucky’s past threatens to expose the truth behind the killings, as well as the demon doll’s untold origins.
Confined to an asylum for the criminally insane for the past four years, Nica is wrongly convinced that she, not Chucky, murdered her entire family... until a string of grisly deaths occur after her psychiatrist introduces a new group therapy tool -- a "Good Guy" doll.
The lives of Amaia, Lidia, Argi, Beatriz, Elena and Marta belong to different worlds, although connected to each other by means of a doll named Molly, whose existence dates back to 1976, when she appeared among the rubble of the great fire at the San Juan orphanage. Carlos, north of Spain. Molly accompanies each of our protagonists through their own nightmares, witnessing all of it and being part of the horrors they face, changing their lives forever.
After the passing of her mother, a young woman in a wheelchair since birth, is forced to deal with her sister, brother-in-law, niece and their nanny as they say their goodbyes to mother. When people start turning up dead, Nica discovers the culprit might be a strange doll she received a few days earlier.
Adeline Gray’s attempt to escape bombing leads her to a derelict, creepy manor in the woods. When Adeline’s young daughter goes missing, a series of inexplicable events lead her to believe a haunted doll holds a vengeful soul; the soul of a murdered Witch. As Adeline’s desperate search continues, she soon realizes she too is at the mercy of The Witch’s Doll.
Jamie returns to his hometown in search of answers to his wife's murder, which occurred after receiving a weird package containing a ventriloquist dummy named Billy, which may be linked to the legend of ventriloquist Mary Shaw. Destined to find out the truth, Jamie goes to the town of Raven's Fair, where Shaw used to perform and is buried. But Jamie is in for more than he expected.
A botched bust on a pair of arms dealers inadvertantly leads to the raising of a sixty-six-year-old demon with the power to bring toys to life as his personal minions. The demon is looking for a body to inhabit so he can increase his powers, and it just so happens that one of the police officers is pregnant with the ideal host.
A group of people on a world wide search for oddities find themselves trapped in a nine hundred year old Italian castle when they accident unleash the Demonic Toys.
The Demonic Toys are back, so policewoman Judith Grey seeks the help of 12 inch tall Dollman and his 12 inch tall girlfriend, Nurse Ginger. The Toys hole up in an evil deserted toy factory and it's up to Dollman to keep the Toys from summoning the powers of darkness to the Earth.
A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion.
An American family moves to Mexico to fabricate dolls, but their toy factory happens to be next to a Sanzian grave and the toys come into possession of an old, malicious spirit.
It doesn’t move, it doesn’t think, it just kills, and for a young woman and her friends, a chance encounter with the supernatural entity proves deadly, because once you see it, don’t you dare look away or it comes for you… and keeps coming for you, until you’re dead!
When her good tenants go bad, a landlord finds herself terrorized by a cult that seemingly has her husband enthralled — and her daughter in its sights.
When Jessica moves back into her childhood home with her family, her youngest stepdaughter Alice develops an eerie attachment to a stuffed bear named Chauncey she finds in the basement. Alice starts playing games with Chauncey that begin playful and become increasingly sinister. As Alice’s behavior becomes more and more concerning, Jessica intervenes only to realize Chauncey is much more than the stuffed toy bear she believed him to be.
When a man is hired to enhance a fashion show, he decides to go to a puppeteer and use Chinese puppets as accents to the models and the clothes. His interest in the show becomes a personal one when he meets one of the models and romance blossoms. An old woman loans him her antique puppets on the condition that he not keep them in the house with him, or grave misfortunes will result. As one might expect, he ignores the warning and then starts to experience a few accidents and unusual occurrences - including being knocked out by what he thought was a puppet, and seeing flashes of a murder while...
A toymaker develops a method to create dolls that kill. This was a pilot for a proposed but unrealized TV series to be titled "Light Out!," based on the much earlier radio program of the same name.
Relatives of a recently deceased man meet at his eerie castle for a reading of the will. They encounter a sinister piano player who turns out to be a toy maker, and his toys are imbued with murderous intentions.
A nine year old boy named Joey, who after the tragic death of his father, begins to experience psychic powers such as allowing him to move inanimate objects with his mind, set things on fire, and even communicate with his dead father. However, not everything is good for Joey as his newly gained powers accidentally awake an evil supernatural force that is contained inside the body of an old ventriloquist's dummy that Joey found in an abandoned house. The supernatural Dummy shows similar powers to Joey's, and soon he puts the lives of everyone near Joey in danger as the evil Dummy has dark plans...
A brilliant toy company roboticist uses artificial intelligence to develop M3GAN, a life-like doll programmed to emotionally bond with her newly orphaned niece. But when the doll's programming works too well, she becomes overprotective of her new friend… with terrifying results.
When Dani is brutally murdered at the remote country house that she and her husband Ted are renovating, everyone suspects a patient from the local mental health institution, where Ted is a doctor. However, soon after the killing, the suspect is found dead. A year later, Dani's blind twin sister Darcy, a self-proclaimed psychic and collector of cursed items, pays an unexpected visit to Ted and his new girlfriend, Yana. Convinced that there was more to her sister's murder than people know, Darcy has brought with her the most dangerous items from her cursed collection to help her exact revenge.
Defense attorney Jennifer Garrick acquires a Pinocchio puppet from a condemned serial killer. Her pre-teen daughter, Zoe, mistakes the puppet as a birthday present and grows attached to her new friend. Suddenly, accidents begin to happen to those who cross Zoe. Zoe claims it's her Pinocchio doll but her therapist thinks otherwise. Pinocchio promises he'll behave if Zoe will cut his strings...
We follow James as his grandfather, Geppetto, introduces him to a seemingly magical doll to become best friends. However, unaware of Pinocchio's naïve nature, as James introduces him to the world it results in the doll going on a crusade to eliminate all things “bad.”
While celebrating Christmas at a cabin in the woods, a group of high school students are stalked by a psychotic killer obsessed with horror movie icons.
After being contacted by their mysterious former colleague, four psychics arrive at a secluded hotel where they are stalked by a group of murderous puppets.
In a Stateside hotel during the height of World War II, young Danny Coogan dreams of joining the war effort. Following the murder of hotel guest Mr. Toulon by Nazi assassins, Danny finds the old man's crate of mysterious puppets and is suddenly thrust into a battle all his own. He discovers that Nazis Max and Klaus, along with beautiful Japanese saboteur Ozu, plan to attack a secret American manufacturing plant. After his family is attacked and his girlfriend Beth is kidnapped, it is up to Danny and the living deadly Puppets to stop this Axis of Evil.
In PUPPET MASTER XI - AXIS TERMINATION, the final chapter of the AXIS Saga, we find our heroic band of lethal puppets-BLADE, PINHEAD, TUNNELER, JESTER, SIX SHOOTER, and LEECH WOMAN, joining forces with a secret team of Allied Operatives, all masters of psychic powers, as they face off together against a new bunch of evil Nazi adversaries and their collection of vicious Axis Puppets in a showdown that will decide the future of the free world.
A recently divorced young man discovers a mint condition Blade doll in his deceased brother's closet and plans to sell the toy at a convention in Oregon celebrating the 30th anniversary of the infamous Toulon Murders. All hell breaks loose during the auction when a strange force animates all of the puppets throughout the convention, setting them on a bloody killing spree.
A group of toymakers seek to use Andre Toulon's formula, now in the hands of Toulon's great-nephew Robert, to give life to a line of killer toys that they plan to unleash on Christmas Eve.
Puppet Master X follows the characters of Danny as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend Beth with the help of Toulon's puppets. However their help is short lived as they end up getting stolen by Ozu (Terumi Shimazu). Danny and Beth must try to rescue the puppets while trying to defend themselves against a new batch of puppets. Meanwhile the occultist Commandant Moebius is attempting to use the serum that animates the puppets to create a master race and take over the world
In this chilling story based on real life events a family experience terrifying supernatural occurrences when their son acquires a vintage doll called Robert.
A young boy sees his father killed by a toy that was anonymously delivered to his house. After that, he is too traumatized to speak, and his mother must deal with both him and the loss of her husband. Meanwhile, a toy maker named Joe Peto builds some suspicious-looking toys, and a mysterious man creeps around both the toy store and the boy's house...but who is responsible for the killer toys?
A stop-motion animator, struggling to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother, embarks upon the creation of a film that becomes the battleground for her sanity. As her mind starts to fracture, the characters in her project take on a life of their own.
Kang Yu-jin, a wealthy biology professor doing a butterfly field study, takes in a new housemaid; the young woman, Mi-ok, is the daughter of a shaman priestess who recently died in a house fire. At first, Yu-jin and his wife, Seon-hee, welcome Mi-ok into their home, but Seon-hee begins to have misgivings when she sees a strange wooden doll that the maid has brought with her. Having suffered from nightmares about exactly the same doll, Seon-hee becomes increasingly suspicious that Mi-ok is trying to kill her and usurp her household. In a fit of madness, Seon-hee causes Mi-ok to fall to her deat...
A cash strapped student who starts working the night shift at a Museum suspects that one of the exhibits, a creepy vintage doll named Robert, is alive and wreaking havoc after hours.
Paul Lavond was a respected banker in Paris when he was framed for robbery and murder by crooked associates and sent to Devil's Island. Years later, he escapes with a friend, a scientist who was working on a method to reduce humans to a height of mere inches (all for the good of humanity, of course). Lavond however is consumed with hatred for the men who betrayed him, and takes the scientist's methods back to Paris to exact painful revenge.
"The Dummy" is a 1982 student film by Louis La Volpe. It was picked up by HBO, USA Network, and Showtime in the early days of cable TV, receiving extensive play for almost ten years, more than any other short film. It was often used as a bumper for horror movies and suspense anthologies like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." The film was the source of nightmares for a generation of kids watching late night television in the 1980s and inspired the "Child's Play" films.
Twelve year-old Jamie Benjamin is a solitary misunderstood boy in his preteens. His classmates pick on him, his neighbors think he's weird and his parents ignore him. But now Jamie has a secret weapon: deep in the woods he has discovered a deep pit full of man-eating creatures he calls Trogs... and it isn't long before he gets an idea for getting revenge and feeding the Trogs in the process!
Inspector Holloway is investigating a series of brutal murders in which a doll of each victim is found at the scene. The dolls, as it turns out,were purchased by the crippled Mrs. Von Sturm, whose home is overcrowded with a doll collection. Her pale, wide-eyed, neurotic son is the prime suspect and the daughter of one of the victims discovers the shocking truth.
After their car breaks down, a group of young travelers find themselves stranded at a roadside museum run by the enigmatic Mr. Slausen and populated by his collection of life-like wax mannequins.
A big family moves into a dusty old house in the snowy woods of Washington with hopes of it being a nice holiday escape. But the kids soon discover a stash of old toys that just so happen to belong to a creepy ghost boy. As stranger and stranger things start to happen, some of the kids begin to sense that something in the house is not quite right…
A horror anthology containing three stories: a female college professor is aggressively pursued by one of her students; a prudish brunette determines that her free-spirited blonde sister is evil; and a woman's night turns upside down after she purchases an ancient Zuni fetish doll.
Three tales of terror: in "The Graveyard Rats" lovers murder the woman's older husband and encounter horror when they attempt to rob his grave; "Bobby" is the story of a woman who summons her son back from the dead; and in "He Who Kills" an African doll goes on a murderous rampage.
