Practical - Designing Dolls

I found these two pictures online and these inspired me to put dolls in our film opening. I felt that the dolls would emphasize his fascination with women. The dolls in these pictures aren't clothed and some have limbs missing. I liked this idea, but decided to draw on the naked dolls as well. Not only would this make the killer seem more haunting and psychotic, but it will also hint that he is lonely and unfulfilled as he spends his time killing women and drawing on dolls.

I wrote words associated with death, murder and sex such as "HELL"  "TORTURE"  SIN"  "SCREAM"  "WHORE"  and rearranged letters of words like 'you' to say "OYU" to show his delusion. Also, I put question marks, 666 and Christian crosses all over their bodies - 666 = Anti-Christ, Crosses = Pro-Christ and the question marks showing his confusion.

I drew thick black Xs on all the dolls, where their wombs are, so where the baby is. The X marks where he cuts them open - X is where his 'treasure' is.

Also, I put a thick black strip over all the dolls' necks because the killer strangles his victims - the audience see this in the opening. I also marked over their eyes to represent how the killer does not care about his victim being a human - she is just an object. As well, I made their hair messy which represents their struggle - as they ran away from him and was strangled and dragged around, their hair became untidy.

On the day in the shed, there was a box of nails which sparked the idea of putting some on the cross on her stomach to show that he is destroying the fetus behind the X mark.

Deconstruction of Dolls

In The Horror of the Dolls (2010), the dolls are given a mind of their own. They are 'possessed' and kill people as a result - supernatural & horror genre.

In a few shots, some of the dolls are crying blood which we could include in our film opening because it conforms to bloody horror conventions.

In the shot, the doll is standing in the corner and the camera focuses on it for a couple of seconds then the doll blinks. This reinforces the supernatural horror genres as well as scaring the audience because dolls are not alive. Though this would scare the audience which is what we want to achieve, live dolls would not be appropriate for our film opening as our genre is not supernatural.



Other films with dolls in are the Chucky films. Chucky is a talking doll however turns out to be alive. Again, this would not be appropriate to our genre and its conventions however Chucky's face is scarred and his eyes are wide and devilish. We could make our dolls look like that which will show the audience how the killer mistreats people; leaves them bloody and scarred and does not care.

The Conjuring (2013) features a possessed evil doll which looks innocent and pretty which subverts the usual convention of evil dolls looking malicious (like the examples above). However, looking closely you can see her 'rosy cheeks; are actually cuts and she has several cuts all over her face and neck.

In the trailer, a quick shot appears of a muddy dolls head buried beneath branches and we could include something like this; a quick shot of a stereotypically evil-looking doll (possibly soaked in blood - conforming to horror conventions) to shock the audience.

Other films featuring dolls include the Saw films, Dead Silence (2007) and Demonic Dolls and these dolls are also alive, some being possessed.  These emphasize their supernatural genre even though they are horrors as well. Possessed/living dolls will not be appropriate for our film opening however having female dolls around his 'den' will be interesting to the audience and will further add to the killer's personality and his obsession with women. The Saw doll has strange make-up on his face which we could do on our dolls as well.