The Creepy Doll

DIRECTED BY: P.J. Woodside
REVIEWED BY: Mario Dominick

Kentucky’s Big Biting Pig Productions are back again with another suspenseful homegrown horror effort focusing on a girl’s unhealthy relationship with a doll. Steve Hudgins and P.J. Woodside have given us such low budget wonders like the twist-filled psycho killer flick Maniac on the Loose, the El Chupacabra story Goat Sucker, the psychological thriller Widow, and the zombie movie Hell is Full which is what you could call “Night of the Living Dead meets Memento.” With Widow being directed by P.J. and the other three being directed by Steve, The Creepy Doll returns P.J. to the director’s chair once again.

The Creepy Doll starts out with a flashback of a girl’s mother forcing her to toss out one of her childhood dolls as she’s now too old for it. Cut to the present, a married couple expecting a baby has moved into a new house with the help of the husband’s mother and father. The wife (played very well by Kristine Renee Farley) finds much sentimental value in her doll collection. In fact, she seems to find herself a little too drawn to the dolls, including a rather ugly-looking one with a face with runny-looking paint. Her husband seems to still be maintaining a secret relationship with his ex girlfriend who’s a psychologist. He becomes worried about his wife all the while she suspects him of cheating on her with the ex. The creepy old doll in the bedroom seems to frighten guests of the house, most notably an impressionable young girl visiting with her father (played by Steve Hudgins). Things grow more and more hostile between the couple as the “Creepy Doll” seemingly gains a psychological control over the wife. Whether her actions are that of her own free will or of the doll’s orders becomes increasingly unclear as things boil to a bloody head and bodies start piling up.

The Creepy Doll is another exceptional, well-produced psychological horror effort from Hudgins and Woodside at BBPP, who are showing themselves to be masters of the craft in low budget filmmaking. With The Creepy Doll, influences by Hitchcock and Polanski can clearly be seen in the same way shades of Christopher Nolan, George Romero, and others can be seen in the other movies. Like the previous movies, there is some blood spilled throughout but it never becomes a balls-out gorefest, though for the type of movies Hudgins and Woodside have made up to this point, lots of blood and boobs isn’t really necessary. As always, it will be interesting to see where they go next.

Big Biting Pig’s DVD of The Creepy Doll contains a healthy amount of extras, including an audio commentary, a “making of” documentary, deleted scenes, blooper reel, trailers, and more. Go to www.bigbitingpigproductions.com to order your copy today.