Bleh with Barry

So, recently, I watched The Woman in Black starring Harry Potter alum Daniel Radcliffe. It actually wasn’t a terrible movie. Matter-of-factly, it was my kind of scary movie where much of the action is suggested rather than seen with buckets of blood and gore to boot. However, while watching, I was reminded of something else that unnerves me to look at it… Dolls, marionettes, and other creepy toys with their soulless eyes and off-putting faces with the weird smiles (of fanged teeth… as shown in the movie). The creepy factor of such things make them my 91 0f 101 Fears Countdown (and yes, I know that this is the first one in a while…).

Why are dolls and things like this that scary / creepy / “Oh God! Don’t let it eat my face!”-y?

1) Growing up in the era of the “Child’s Play” movies, the idea that the doll might come to life and kill me was something that I dealt with as a child that sends a shiver up my spine whenever I see one in a haunted house movie or anything else. This is also amped up in most movies that contain a haunting because the toys themselves move on their own… this adds to that little bit of claustrophobia because there is nowhere to go if the toys themselves are attacking you.

2) The sound of a toy in the night. I’m sure that you’ve all been there in your dark house lying in bed, and you hear a chuckle from down the hall… it’s a creepy effect… it’s a little unsettling. This ethereal kind of sound, the disembodied voice is awful… enough said… Well, maybe not quite enough… the fact that dolls are becoming increasingly more mechanized makes what they can do and the creep factor explode a little more (whereas the ghost houses make toys move… now, the toys that children play with are doing what ghosts and ghouls could never dream of…).

3) Now, going to the specific of the marionettes… there’s always something creepy about the boldness of the facial design of most marionettes… they are either incredibly happy or drastically depressed… there is no in-between… Also, the fact that they are being controlled by some one is a little creepy as well… yeah…

So there you have it… why dolls are creepy / scary and why they make the list of my top 101 fears…