Underrated Killer Doll Movies to Watch After M3GAN

Sammy Snyders stars as Jamie, a pre-teen driven mad by lust and murder instructions from his teddy bear Teddy. To facilitate Jamie’s newly-developed homicidal tendencies, he’s found a pit full of prehistoric monsters he calls “Trogs,” who love nothing more than to tear apart any person who falls in their way. Under Teddy’s instruction, Jamie lures hapless victims into the pit, where they get mauled to death by the Trogs. Yeah, it’s not exactly the purest of killer doll stories, but how can you ignore such a lovable mess?

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker

You probably know Silent Night, Deadly Night as a seminal killer Santa movie, and its sequel Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 as a seminal garbage day movie. But did you know that the third and fourth entries in the franchise have nothing to do with Christmas or slashers, and are about witches and bugs? Did you further know that the fifth entry is a Pinocchio riff starring Mickey Rooney (vocal critic of the original Silent Night, Deadly Night) as toymaker Joe Petto? And did you know that the fifth entry is co-written by the aforementioned Stuart Gordon collaborator Brian Yuzna, who directed the fourth entry? 

The fifth Silent Night, Deadly Night takes a hard turn from the previous four entries, telling a (relatively) sweeter story about a grieving father and his odd son Pino (see where this is going?). I mean, sure it has an army of killer toys and Pino assaulting a woman while begging him to be his mother, but given where the series began, that counts as sweetness. 

Pin

Once again, we have a movie that uses the Pinocchio story to lend some class to the trashy killer doll trope, but this time… it’s Canadian! Directed by Sandor Stern, Pin stars David Hewlett as Leon, a young man who was taught by his physician father (Terry O’Quinn) about the human body through a ventriloquist doll called Pin. Even more weird is Leon’s response to watching a nurse take sexual advantage of Pin, triggering in the boy a hatred of women and a belief that the doll is real. 

Not unlike The Pit, Pin follows a troubled lad whose murderous tendencies get filtered through his doll. But Stern strikes a surprisingly compelling mix between psychological complexity and outright trash. Even better, the movie features Jonathan Banks – yes, Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad – as the voice of Pin, making the visually disturbing humanoid even more unsettling. 

Maria Leonora Teresa

Given their inextricable association with children, it makes sense that so many killer doll movies threaten kids. But the 2014 Filipino movie Maria Leonora Teresa goes one step further by featuring dead kids. Lots of dead kids. Directed by Wenn V. Deramas, Maria Leonora Teresa stars Jodi Sta. Maria, Iza Calzado, and Zanjoe Marudo as three parents whose children die in a bus accident seemingly orchestrated by the specter of a burned boy. As a form of radical therapy, a psychologist (Cris Villanueva) presents the parents with dolls made to resemble the dead children, which they reluctantly accept.