Fantasia 2025 Review: DOLLHOUSE, A Worthy And Entertaining Addition to The Cursed Doll Genre

Yoshie and her husband Tadahiko devote all their energy and love to five-year-old Mei. The day that Yoshie is tasked with looking after the gaggle of girls in the neighbourhood, she has them all over for a play day with Mei. She has to duck out for a few minutes to stock up on snacks, so the girls start a game of hide-and-seek around the house. When Yoshie returns, nobody’s there. All the girls have returned home, and Mei is nowhere to be seen. After a long search, the girl's lifeless body is found horribly. 

 

A year goes by, and Yoshie, still devastated by grief and guilt, discovers an old, life-sized doll at a flea market and begins to care for it to fill that void in her life. She treats it as if it were the reincarnation of Mei. It may be disturbing to Tadahiko, but doll therapy would be helpful in her recovery. This goes on until the couple are blessed with another daughter, whom they name Mei. 

 

Years have passed, and the five-year-old Mei finds the old doll in the back of a closet and makes it her favourite toy, spending every moment with it. But soon strange things start to happen. Mei has conversations with it. It appears to move on its own. It may have even attacked Mei in a fit of jealousy since Yoshie abandoned it years ago. It wants to be loved by Yoshie again, and it is willing to do great harm to get it. 

 

JHorror Dollhouse adds to the pantheon of the cursed doll genre with a fun, creepy ride from director and screenwriter Shinobu Yaguchi. At first, it may seem so out of left field to see the director of such cult comedy classics as Swing Girls, Waterboys, and Robo-G strike out into JHorror territory for the first time, but watching this, you would think that they have been making horror films all along. 

 

Yaguchi did their homework. Gags with hair (literally in some cases), things that crawl under bedsheets, are just a couple of the common staples of the JHorror genre, familiar tools used to elicit reactions from the viewer. Was anyone else holding their breath, waiting for the doll’s eyes to blink? 

 

Anchored by Masami Nagasawa, in an excellently anxious performance that is countered by an equally concerned Kôji Seto as their husband, the story unfolds, one absurd moment after another. This is all part of the fun as the couple navigates each discovery and attempts every new and possible solution for this growing threat to their family. 

 

Dollhouse is not lazy but a fast-paced movie with many developments, one after the other, giving it a sense of speed that also elevates the development of the story. And even with that, each escalation works as a release for the viewer, as we stare in disbelief at each development. Just when you think things are over, whammo. You may guffaw at the screen, but you might have been holding your breath all that time. 

 

There should be a warning that comes with watching Dollhouse. As with a lot of your favorite JHorror classics, here evil is also born out of acts of hate, and in this story, that is against children. As the haunted doll’s origin story comes to light, the theme of child abuse circles back from an earlier scene in the movie that was first meant to shock the viewer, a gag leaves you asking, That just didn’t happen. It, of course, turns out not to be true. It is tailored with maximum effect. But we felt compelled to share this with you here. 

 

The climax keeps you on your toes as reality slips between the moment and history for the characters. What we see on screen will not always be true, just as it is for the characters, which is the point for them and adds to the punchline at the end. Whose ‘house’ is it in the end?