Examples of Creepy Doll in live-action movies.
- Borderline example in Casey, Newt's doll in Aliens. It's just a hollow plastic head, which probably used to belong to a baby doll. The girl comforted it when she was nervous to try to reassure herself.
- In Amusement, there is a scene where
a babysitter goes to bed in a room filled with creepy clown dolls. She is so disturbed that she complains on the phone to the parents of the kids she's watching, especially about one freaky life-sized clown doll sitting in a chair. The parents reply that there is no "big" doll. It turns out it's a killer in disguise, which the kids have for some reason let into the house because he said he wanted to play. - Ant-Man: The bunny doll that Scott gives to his daughter for her birthday looks like it came straight from Monty Python. She loves it.
- Baby Jane, a 2011 parody remake of the original Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, featured a creepy Baby Jane doll that would inexplicably animate itself in various scenes, culminating in the final scene where she comes to life and repeats a line said by Baby Jane earlier in the film.
- Beware the Woods: In the prologue of the movie, when the unnamed hiker happens across the old lady's house, the camera cuts to a shot of a doll inside with a slightly dirty, cracked face. It doesn't really do anything for the movie other than help the house look scary.
- The razor-toothed killer dolls from Barbarella.
- Black Devil Doll is a Blaxploitation slasher flick with a radical black activist being reincarnated as the eponymous doll.
- In The Blair Witch Project, the group is camping in the forest and encounters a bunch of stick-doll effigies hanging from the trees.
- The Boy prominently features one of these in Brahms, an effigy of a nine-year-old boy who died years ago. However, that the movie is actually a subversion, and there's nothing supernatural about the doll whatsoever, because the real Brahms didn't die at all, and is in fact now a grown Psychopathic Manchild making the doll move when no one is watching.
- In the sequel, this is retconned into a straightforward example — apparently, the doll was possessed by a supernatural creature all along, and the previous movie was just one in a long line of incidents caused by the doll.
- Cain Hill: When Marcus is walking around the upper floor of the asylum gathering footage, he enters a room, and the camera (the movie's camera, not the one that Marcus is holding) zooms in on a creepy doll sitting in a chair. The doll shows up at the end of the movie with a number next to them, possibly as a piece of crime scene evidence.
- Child's Play:
- A dying serial killer Charles "Chucky" Lee Ray transfers his soul into a doll, and continues to cause havoc as he searches a proper new body.
- There's also Tiff and Glenn from the same series. However, Glenn is somewhat of a subversion and Tiff is... Tiff.
- Clown Motel: There are plenty of creepy clown dolls on the property. The camera shows a couple of shots that just show the dolls.
- In the educational short A Day in the Life of a $2 Bill, the toy store that the kids shop at features an assortment of creepy bears, dolls, and other figurines, accompanied by Creepy Circus Music similar to that of the "Mechanical Technology" segment on Sesame Street.
- In Dead Birds, Clyde finds a ragdoll with stitching that makes it look like the eyes and mouth have been sewn shut. This turns out to be Foreshadowing as Clyde is eventually strung up as a Scary Scarecrow with his eyes and mouth stitched shut.
- Deep Red: the walking deformed doll provides a Jump Scare.
- "The Dolls' Revenge" from 1907 is perhaps the first cinematic example of this trope. The 2:45 short features a little boy callously breaking his sister's dolls- which then grow to life-size (represented by human actresses), turn HIM into a doll, and eat him. Probably meant to be more of a morality tale for children than an Evil Doll situation, but quite creepy nonetheless.
- Doll Factory: The titular dolls are little grey bald-headed people in black dresses who are trying to collect souls for their master.
- Dolls (1987) has several people taking refuge in an old mansion filled with all sorts of dolls. Turns out that they are inhabited by supposed "fairies" (in truth, evil men), which start attacking the characters.
- The Elf: The main villain of the movie is a creepy Christmnas elf doll that Nick finds in the backroom of a store. After he reads a note that comes with it out loud, he ends up bringing the doll to life, causing it to kill his and his fiance's families, and himself.
- Full Circle features a cymbal-clapping clown doll, whose cymbals are dangerously sharp. Sharp enough, it turns out, to slit a throat...
- The titular carnival attraction in The Funhouse is filled with them.
- In It's Pat!, Kyle's obsession with Pat includes him having a Pat doll.
- Killer Under the Bed: The antagonist of the film is a doll with white skin, white clothes, very little hair, a Mouth Stitched Shut, and long limbs. It has the power to either bless or curse anyone its owner wishes, but the wishes grow in intensity over time. Oh, and the doll can move around and possess people.
- Kruel: When Jo and Ben investigate Willie's house one night for evidence he was behind Elliot's disappearance, they find his house filled with various dolls. They all activate seemingly by themselves and start moving and making noise, prompting Jo and Ben to leave before Willie catches them.
- Lost Creek: The mummy Halloween decoration with the large eyes and smile becomes this when it starts moving around Peter's room all by itself.
- The functional equivalent thereof in Mad Love, in which Dr. Gogol, having been rejected by a pretty actress, buys a wax dummy of said actress. And has his maid brush the dummy's hair. And buys a negligee for the dummy.
- Maniac! (1980)'s Frank Zito keeps various mannequins in his apartment as odd trophies that wear the clothes and scalps of his female victims. In the ending, he has a hallucination where they come to life and rip him into pieces.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger often decorates his victims' dreams with mutilated dollies and is occasionally seen holding one by its legs or hair. A symbolic nod to his past killings of young children, which we never actually see on-screen.
- In Onryō! Azawarau Ningyō, Junichiro is killed because he's got evidence of a huge case of fraud by a colleague of his, Kitahara, who incidentally also is a former rival over Kumi, Junichiro's wife. The only thing of Junichiro that makes it back home is a doll he bought for his daughter Yukari. Said doll becomes a vessel for Junichiro's spirit, enabling him to protect his family from Kitahara and obtain justice for his murder. It kills Kitahara in an act of defending Kumi and Yukari when Kitahara's scheme comes to light. Thereafter, the doll returns to normal.
- Subverted in Pinocchios Revenge, a B-slasher film. The kid had a Split Personality which she projected onto her doll.
- The Clown Doll from Poltergeist (1982). For the first half of the movie, it just sits on a rocking chair, doing nothing. Then it disappears....
- All of the puppets from the Puppet Master franchise.
- Razors: The Return of Jack the Ripper, the ghost of the little girl is carrying a porcelain doll. When the protagonist finds the doll in the attic, it is even creepier close up, with a maze of cracks running through its face. The flickering light causes its eyes to appear completely black.
- Red Dragon focuses on a Serial Killer who murders families in their beds. In one particular crime scene, the camera dwells on the creepy old antique dolls of a murdered child. The Uncanny Valley effect of the dolls' eyes actually helps the hero to figure out part of the killer's motivating fantasy.
- Reincarnation (2005) features one of the creepiest damn ones you may ever see.
- In Scrooge (1951), Tiny Tim is first seen gazing into a shop window with (authentic Victorian) mechanical toys, including a laughing-man doll that's pure nightmare fuel — although Tim seems to find it charming.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) has a creepy bobble head doll called "the littlest elf" in the rear-view window of Count Olaf's car.
- Shallow Grave features a perfectly normal laughing doll. It still manages to get a creepy scene.
- Sheitan: Eve's father owned a doll store, and the house contains a dollmaker's workshop full of partially built dolls and doll parts, and his collections of antique marionettes and giant dolls in the attic. All of this is quite creepy. Additionally, Marie is sneaking around the house assembling a doll with a broken head that she keeps attaching human parts to.
- Subverted in Summer School when the male lead is seen slicing the head off a Raggedy Andy doll. This could've been creepy, had he not immediately offered the cloth head to his dog, whose favorite doll-head chew toy has been misplaced.
- The abandoned baby doll in Johanna's bassinet from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It's decayed with age and probably smoke damage/mildew and is damn scary. (This scene also serves as an Empathy Doll Shot for Johanna's current plight.)
- The opening of Titanic (1997) features a group of divers exploring the Titanic wreck. A few shots pan across some of the destroyed trinkets and other such former valuables scattered across the ocean floor. One shot reveals an eerie white face that resembles a child and for a moment you think it's a child's detached head, but it turns out to just be a lone face separated from a doll. Based on a Real Life story. Bob Ballard on his first visit to the wreck by manned submersible encountered a disembodied doll's head just like the one in the Cameron film. The sub's crew of three hardened explorers freaked out at this discovery.
- In the miniseries for The Tommyknockers, police officer Ruth has a collection of creepy dolls in her office. After she finds out what's going on with the town, the aliens make the dolls come "alive" and attack her, to prevent her from phoning for help. The scarecrow doll is especially scary.
- The various mannequins in Tourist Trap, which are controlled by their owner.
- The Zuni Fetish Doll from the last segment of Trilogy of Terror, which comes alive after a certain necklace is removed from its neck and starts vehemently chasing the main character.
- Underworld U.S.A.: After Cuddles passes out, she wakes up on the bed in the room that houses Sandy's doll collection, which are staring at her unnervingly.
- Mexican film "Vacaciones de Terror" uses a doll as a way to channel the power of a witch that was burned centuries before to posess a little girl and provoke supernatural events in a haunted house.
- These are a recurring motif in James Wan's horror movies. His Instagram handle is "creepypuppet", and in a preview for M3GAN, he joked that he gets "accused of being the master of killer doll movies."
- "Billy" in the Saw films, whose image is used by the Jigsaw killer to relay to rules of his latest Death Trap.
- Dead Silence is a good example of how creepy a doll can really be even when not possessed by evil spirits bent on ripping out your tongue and making you into part of its collection.
- The Conjuring features a truly creepy doll by the name of Annabelle, pictured above, that has been possessed by a demon, and is apparently based on a real-life case (see the Real Life section). It later got its own spinoff titled Annabelle (without Wan's involvement), which itself received two sequels.
- The titular Robot Girl villain in M3GAN (which Wan didn't direct, but produced and has a story credit on) has a very doll-like appearance to heighten her Uncanny Valley nature. The second trailer is even set to the song "Dolls" by Bella Poarch in order to drive it home.
- The Woman in Black just loves this trope. Everywhere you look in the spooky ole house, there's a doll on a shelf with a truly hideous face. Even the 'normal' kids at the start of the film are playing with some creepy dolls.
