The Doll is a 2017 film from Mongolia directed by B. Tsogt-Erdene. It's a horror movie.
Sanaa is a young office worker in Ulaanbaatar who is having some serious problems. The worst problem is that her mother is in the hospital, gravely ill with some disease that is probably cancer. That has left Sanaa broke, as she is spending all her money on medicine for her mother, and she is three months late on her rent. The cherry on top is her boss Buyanaa, who is a handsy sexually-harassing creep.
Apparently Sanaa hasn't watched many horror movies, because she makes the classic horror movie mistake of buying a Creepy Doll from a homeless beggar. It's bad enough that the doll looks like Chucky's sister and is thoroughly creepy, but one night, after getting thoroughly drunk at a bar, Sanaa passes out on the floor of her apartment, in the process slicing her hand on a shattered glass. She has a dream—or is it a dream?—where the doll comes to life, and tells Sanaa that it comes to life whenever it gets human blood. The doll then tells Sanaa that if she gives the doll a blood offering, the doll will grant her a wish. Sanaa wishes for some money, so she can buy medicine for her mom.
The next morning Sanaa is in a horrible traffic accident when the bus she is riding on is T-boned by a truck. As Sanaa regains consciousness in the wrecked bus she finds herself looking straight into the dead, staring eyes of another passenger. She then notices that the passenger had a satchel full of cash.
Yes, it's Creepy Doll crossed with "The Monkey's Paw".
Tropes:
- Briefcase Full of Money: Sanaa's wish for money for her mom results in her picking up the bag full of cash lying next to the dead guy on the bus. It's not quite as much as it looks (one of those 20,000 Tugrik bills is only about $8) but it's more than enough for Mom's medicine.
- Came Back Wrong: Sanaa probably should know better by that point, but she's desperate—she gives the doll blood and asks it to bring her mother back to life. It does, but when Mom wakes up she is slackjawed and staring, seemingly near catatonic—except when she says "I'm hungry" in an extremely unsettling way. Then, when Sanaa goes off to work, the thing that used to be her mother tears the nurse apart and eats her.
- Creepy Doll: The doll is pretty creepy to begin with, what with the grayish skin, spiky black hair, and open, staring eyes. Turning into a horrifying little vampire demon when it gets blood is really just the icing on the cake.
- Desk Sweep of Rage: Drunk and angry and looking at the three separate overdue rent notices on her coffee table, Sanaa angrily sweeps everything on the coffee table onto the floor, and in the process slices her hand on a shattered glass. This results into the first blood offering to the doll.
- Dies Wide Open: Sanaa comes to in the flipped-over bus to find a dead guy staring at her.
- Distant Finale: A "six months later" chyron takes us to an obviously pregnant Sanaa—apparently the child of her rape, but she seems pretty OK with it. She's less OK when the ultrasound reveals the face of the demon.
- Dream Sequence: Two different dreams that are basically reality. The first one is Sanaa's first encounter with the demon doll, where she asks for money. She wakes up back on her floor and it's like it was a dream, but as events prove it was very real. Then later in the hospital Sanaa wanders down to the morgue and sees Buyanaa's corpse get up and shamble away. That time she wakes up back in her mom's room, but a later phone call from her coworker reveals that it happened in real life.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Depression over her mother's rapidly declining health, her own empty bank account, and her awful creepy boss lead Sanaa to get hammered at a bar. She gets so drunk that she can barely stagger home before passing out on the floor of her apartment. Soon after she has her first encounter with the doll.
- Eye Scream: While under possession by the demon doll, Buyanaa jabs out his own eye with a pen.
- Feet-First Introduction: A shot of nothing but his knees and legs as he strides over to Sanaa's desk helps to establish Buyanaa as a bad guy.
- Fetus Terrible: The ending. A pregnant Sanaa goes to her obstetrician for an ultrasound. The fetus turns its face to the ultrasound camera and reveals that it has the face of the demon doll. This is accompanied by an audio callback to Sanaa, when she was begging the doll to revive her mother, saying she didn't want to be alone.
- Fingore:
- After he stabs his own eye out with a pen, a possessed Buyanaa chops off a few of his fingers with a paper-cutter before jumping out the window.
- Sanaa realizes exactly what those chunks of meat her mother is robotically chopping up are, when she sees a couple of human fingers on the cutting board.
- Flashback: Near the end we get a flashback where we see more of the dirty homeless guy selling the doll to Sanaa. The man says that the doll chose her and that it can grant wishes, but that if Sanaa ever doesn't like how the wishes come out, she'll figure out what to do.
- Hitler Cam: The second thing marking Buyanaa out as a bad guy, after the Feet-First Introduction, is the Hitler Cam shot of him looming over a seated Sanaa as he stands by her desk.
- How We Got Here: The film starts out with the scene of the truck hitting the bus. Then a "Three days earlier" takes us back to the beginning of the story, establishing Sanaa's unsatisfactory life before she buys the doll.
- Horror Hunger: The only thing that Sanaa's zombified mother says after the doll brings her back from the dead is "I'm hungry." The next day when she's left alone with the nurse, Zombie Mom tears the nurse apart and eats her.
- Impairment Shot: The screen blurs to demonstrate Sanaa passing out after a night of drinking.
- Jackass Genie: How the doll fulfills Sanaa's wishes. Sanaa wishes for money, so the doll arranges a horrible traffic collision that kills several people, so Sanaa can get a bag full of cash. Sanaa wishes for her boss to die a horrible and painful death, and Buyanaa does, but he also pulls the head boss out the window with him. Sanaa asks for her mother to be brought back from the dead, and she is, but as a flesh-eating ghoul.
- Jump Cut
- There are some jump cuts as a drunk Sanaa enters her apartment, presumably to emphasize her unquiet state of mind.
- There's another jump cut when Sanaa is walking down the creepy, empty hospital corridor, in a scary scene that ends with her confronting her zombie boss.
- Noodle Incident: One line of dialogue, in which Buyanaa says he got Sanaa the job and the apartment and he can take both of those things away, implies that there might be something to their relationship other than that of employee and creepy rapist boss. No further clarification comes.
- Nothing Is Scarier: One tense scene has Sanaa walking down an empty, harshly lit, thoroughly creepy hospital corridor. Finally she finds a corpse on a gurney—which, when it bolts upright, is revealed to be her zombified boss.
- Product Placement: Sanaa gets drunk at a hip nightclub called City Lounge Bar. There's a close-up shot of an employee's badge with the name "City Lounge Bar" visible.
- Rape as Drama: Buyanaa crosses the line from creepy harassing pig to something far worse when he forces his way into Sanaa's apartment, throws her down on the floor, and rapes her.
- Shout-Out: Sanaa's bedtime apparel includes a T-shirt with the iconic logo for The Godfather, namely the title and the hand holding the puppet strings.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: During the whole scene after Buyanaa rapes Sanaa, where he tells her she ruined the evening, and she'd better not call the police, and she can feel free to take a week off of a work, Sanaa merely stares emptily into space.
- To the Pain: When Sanaa tells the doll she wants Buyanaa to die, she specifies that she wants him to suffer and die painfully, and that she wants to know about it. The doll delivers, as Buyanaa stabs out his own eye and chops off his own fingers before he throws himself out the window.
