Dollhouse

A couple lose their child. The mother cannot manage the grief. One day she finds an old life sized doll at a market and brings it home. She starts talking to it, dressing it and treating it as her daughter. After a while a new child joins the family. From that point strange things happen in the house. They try to get rid of the doll; they throw it away, bury it, try to burn it. Every time it comes back. Shinobu Yaguchi directs. Masami Nagasawa plays the mother. Yaguchi is known in Japan mainly for comedies; this is his change of genre and his move into horror. What the narrative builds is grief itself. Before it is a threat the doll is a consolation; the mother puts it in the place of her loss, and the horror comes from that substitution continuing. Dolls and toys have long been used in Japanese horror; the film belongs to that tradition but leans on physical effects and practical work. The tension builds slowly; almost nothing happens in the first half and the threat becomes visible only in the second. Its limit is predictability; as the doll's return is repeated it loses force, and the ending stays inside genre. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese horror and thrillers built on grief. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the frightening elements are familiar, and the narrative repeats in the second half.