When it comes to all things spawning from the uncanny valley, nothing is more notorious than the creepy doll. Even though a porcelain doll might have been fun to play with as a child when the world was all candy and rainbows, as we all got older, things we loved once start to take on a more sinister aura. This is especially true for dolls, whose eyes that once seemingly gleamed with life in our childlike eyes became soulless orbs that stare sinisterly at us. The realism that once made these dolls lifelike now make them seem disgustingly unnatural at full glance. Add in the robotic nature of their arms and legs, and you get the perfect horror creature to play around with in fiction.
The uncanniness of soulless dolls has been the inspiration for many scary tales about the fear of the unknown. The Twilight Zone TV show episode Living Doll had the titular Talking Tina feed off the insecurities of the verbally abusive stepfather Erich Streator until his untimely demise after failing time and time again to destroy the demonic vessel. In the film Child's Play, the notorious Chucky doll reins terror time and time again, never seeming to go away no matter what the circumstances in every installment of the franchise. Then there is the ventriloquist dummy from the Goosebumps book series, Slappy the Dummy, who tries to turn anyone who brings this creature to life through an ancient ritual its Earthly slave. That is not even mentioning real life occurrences of hauntings from dolls such as Annabelle, who inspired a film series centered on its antics.
By looking at the evidence, you can clearly see that the scary doll trope is quite an effective one in horror fiction. It gives all audiences chills from the uncanny nature of the creatures, a fear of the unknown is almost certain once the doll is animated to life, and it has a basis from real life hauntings. So with all this in mind, using some type of doll for horror fiction should be a go to venture for most writers to truly put chills up someone's spine. However, over time, the trope seemingly died out for no explanation whatsoever, despite the story material still being unexplored with this idea.
Instead of the haunted doll taking over the horror medium, other less effective tropes have taken shape in the past few decades. First was the slasher killer storyline, which was great at first with iconic characters like Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees. Over time though, slasher killer stories started copying each other until they became predictable fodder that is a shell of its former self. Following slasher killer stories were hauntings of the supernatural kind, kickstarted with stories such as The Shining and Poltergeist. Those too would expire from overuse, leading to the idea of the psychological thriller. Great headliners like The Silence of the Lambs and Saw helped to feed the fire for this new popular variant of the horror genre until psychological thrillers became as overused as the rest of the tropes. Now, the popular choice for horror stories is utilizing the cheap jump scare that may work for some now, but as the popularity of franchises such as Five Nights at Freddy's starts to lower in popularity, it is only a matter of time before this trope too becomes oversaturated like the rest. Unless a breath of fresh air is given to the horror genre, this cycle will just continue to happen forever, leaving scares extremely formulaic and predictable forever.
Adding an under appreciated trope back such as the scary doll storyline could be a simple solution to the problem. With the rich history dolls have with real life hauntings as well as the common fear most people tend to have towards them, writing a suspenseful, new story using the trope would be an easy win for many inspiring writers. With a strong enough narrative, these simple childhood toys could become blooming icons of the horror genre once more, but in a more iconic nature than before. The best part is that it does not have to be one single doll doing the hauntings, but rather multiple vessels. Sprinkle in lots of the uncanny valley in your storyline and you then have a recipe for horror stories that could pack quite the punch.
New tropes for the horror genre are being invented everyday under our noses by not yet recognized writers, while others are being reinvented so new audiences can appreciate the aspects of the specific types of stories that truly packed a punch. Bringing back the trope of creepy dolls in horror fiction would be a great way to embrace the old and the new. You get the old chills sparked from the unknown origin of their sinister existences, while inventing new ways for the dolls to make us pause in horror. There really is nothing to lose by trying this trope out for yourself.
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