On June 24, the Mexican horror film "The Doll" (Juega Conmigo) is released in Russian theaters, which will be able to tickle the nerves of particularly impressionable viewers, but is unlikely to surprise anyone.

A huge mansion, creepy disobedient children, creaky doors, a nanny with a mysterious past, ghosts — we've seen this set of elements in horror movies many times before. But the creators of the film "The Doll", led by director Adrian Garcia Bogliano ("The ABCs of Death"), decided they could stand out from the slew of monotonous horrors by incorporating a Mexican scary story into the narrative, aiming to give the film some color. We tell you what came of this idea.

Classic Genre Setup

Young Sofia (Liz Dieppa), on her sister's recommendation, takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy family living in a huge mansion. The parents are always busy with their own affairs, so the willful children are often left to their own devices. The previous nanny was driven to the hospital, so no one promises Sofia an easy life. But the girl herself has skeletons in her closet.

Sofia's sister Natalia (Alejandra Rodriguez), trying to protect her relative, tells a scary story about Morbo, a demon who loves to play with naughty children and take away their most precious things (akin to our "little top that will bite your side"). But no one really believes this story until Sofia and the young residents of the mansion are left alone in the house.

One-Dimensional Narrative

The story told by the creators of "The Doll" is neither original nor engaging. Fact.

Instead of attempting to create an interesting antagonist with an unusual background and developing the plot through this element, the film offers only a not-so-engaging and highly predictable struggle of the characters to survive through one night. Moreover, Morbo is not frightening. You don't believe in his danger, because the viewer is presented with no evidence of the demon's cruelty, except for some vague visions of Sofia. Additionally, the viewer must fill in the logical chains of events and imagine the details of the protagonist's relationship with the supernatural force, because the screenwriters clearly neglected this.

Instead of trying to show a psychological horror in the manner of the cult "The Babadook" or last year's "The Lodge," where children also played an unobvious but key role in the story, "The Doll" bets on spectacle and atmosphere. But even on this front, the film is not entirely smooth.

More Jump Scares for the Jump Scare God

As stereotypical as the story turned out, the methods of scaring the viewer are equally predictable. "The Doll" is a whole bouquet of jump scares of varying loudness and duration. In some episodes, they actually work due to surprise; in others, they are frankly annoying and threaten to harm the viewers' ears. In addition to the jump scares, there are suddenly closing doors and a "self-moving" toy — apparently, the director thought this could actually scare someone in 2021.

Any original or bold solutions, alas, were not brought in. Even the design of Morbo turned out to be somewhat derivative, as if it came from the universe of "The Conjuring." However, the animated end credits turned out to be cool. True, that's the best thing in the film.

Is the Film "The Doll" Worth Watching?

In the end, it can be said that Bogliano's film offers nothing new. At the same time, it does not descend into outright trash and may make you scream a couple of times from surprise. Perhaps more should not be expected from such films.

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