A group of artists of all kinds is invited to a workshop at dollmaker
Ms Im's mansion somewhere in the country - a mansion that is littered with
bizarre and often scary dolls, dolls that at times seem to move and seem
to have a soul. and one of the group, Hae-mi (Kim Yu-mi) meets a girl on
the premises, Mina (Lim Eun-kyeong), who eerily resembles one of the dolls
she had as a kid, and who seems weirdly drawn to her. Soon enough though,
members of the group start turning up dead, and all deaths seem to have to
do with dolls, and soon enough, the group is down to two, Hae-mi and
Tae-sung (Shim Hyeong-tak), who only now turns out to be a cop who has
tracked down a killer to the mansion. Unfortunately though, he thinks
Hae-mi is the killer and tries to make an arrest ... before he realizes
that the murders were actually committed by the dolls, controlled by Ms Im
and her brother Jin Won via sorcery, as she wants to take revenge for the
killing of her lover - committed by the grandparents of her guests.
But as soon as Tae-sung sees his mistake, he is also killed by the dolls,
and now it's only Mina who helps Hae-mi against Ms Im, but she's easily
disposed of by her maker ... when a weird man who has been chained up for
most of the movie comes to the rescue and manages to kill both Ms Im and
her brother ... when all the dolls in the house come to life and come
after him and Hae-mi - and they can only be stopped when Hae-mi destroys
the head puppet, who was hidden away in a statue of the holy mother in
front of the mansion ...
This film actually starts out like
just another slasher - if an inventive one - but eventually it takes a
turn into folk tale territory ... and wouldn't you know it, the film,
despite its slightly silly story, works like a charm and comes across as a
bizarre horror tale full of carefully orchestrated slightly absurd images,
scenes that are as shocking as they are eerie and sequences of an
other-worldly uneasy beauty. A film that's definitely worth your time
and money!
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