A subset of killer doll horror movies features psychological horror movies where the doll remains an inanimate object throughout; any homicidal urges or personality are merely a projection by a fractured mind. Anthony Hopkins’ Corky in Magic serves as one of the most prominent examples, and love presented a warped love triangle that catalyzed self-destruction. It paved the way for 1988’s Pin then 2003’s Love Object. These two psychological horror movies used life-sized plastic dolls as a conduit for unhinged characters to channel repressed feelings, desires for connection and love, and awakening sexuality. All of which turned deadly.
Both are perfect Valentine’s Day horror movies, and we’ll explain why…
Writer/Director Sandor Stern’s Pin: A Plastic Nightmare, based on Andrew Neiderman’s novel, centers around an anatomically correct medical dummy. The affluent Dr. Frank Linden (Terry O’Quinn) names the life-sized doll Pin and gives it a voice through ventriloquism to keep children calm or teach them about bodily functions during exams. For his own kids, Ursula and Leon, he uses Pin to teach them about sex. Dr. Linden doesn’t initially notice that son Leon buys a little too hard into Pin’s existence as an actual sentient being.
Leon’s connection with the medical dummy becomes even more warped when he witnesses a nurse using Pin as a sex toy when she thinks no one is around. That attachment to Pin continues well into adulthood, deepened once Leon (David Hewlett) and Ursula (Cynthia Preston) were orphaned. Pin’s presence becomes threatening whenever someone vies for Ursula’s attention, or Leon finds himself in awkward sexual encounters.
Similarly, writer/director Robert Parigi’s Love Object sees a shy tech writer, Kenneth (Desmond Harrington), order a lifelike sex-doll online and soon finds himself in an actual relationship with her. The doll, dubbed Nikki, becomes obsessed with her owner and develops a nasty jealous streak. The relationship grows extremely abusive and deranged, compounded by Kenneth forging a connection with co-worker Lisa (Melissa Sagemiller).
Love Object relies on ambiguity to coax out some effective scares. Parigi presents Nikki as if she really is stalking Kenneth. At least at first. Kenneth gets startled when he wakes to see Nikki lying in bed, staring at him. The incidents regularly increase until it’s finally apparent that Nikki’s persona is all in his head. It means that the viewer is left in suspense as we observe Lisa in danger well before she realizes it, as we watch Kenneth shape her into Nikki’s image.
Pin announces from the beginning that the doll’s personality is a manifestation of Leon, though the idea that it could be alive gets into the characters’ heads. Dr. Linden’s reckless driving becomes lethal when the blanket covering Pin falls off in the backseat, and he peers at the doll in the rearview mirror. Leon places Pin in a motorized chair and later uses that to terrorize a potential romantic liaison. Ursula later explains to her boyfriend why her brother, whom she adores, is so strange; Leon is a paranoid schizophrenic.
The dominant personality in each film’s climax directly shapes the outcome for its lead character in opposite ways. Leon’s uncomfortable overprotectiveness of Ursula creates an unwitting love triangle that dooms him as he lets the Pin identity take over. Love Object’s Kenneth fights for control against Nikki but ultimately reveals that he’s always been the dominant persona. Kenneth’s love triangle ends violently, especially for Nikki, but it opens up the potential for a new cycle. Leon’s ending is more tragic yet safer for Ursula and those she holds dear.
Love and sexual curiosity can be tricky things to navigate in normal circumstances, but psychological horror movies take it to a whole new twisted level. Both horror movies deliver romantic nightmares of the plastic variety, taking different avenues of psychological torment for a deeply disturbed mind and everyone in their orbit.
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