October Horror Challenge 2017 #24: "Heidi (2014)"

I thought this movie came out in 2017 because I hadn't heard anything about this movie until this year. Turns out it's actually from 2014. I'm sad that there was a cool little found footage horror flick about a creepy evil doll floating around and I didn't know about it. I'm creeped out by dolls. Their little frozen faces just get under my skin, so it's not hard for me to believe that they're evil. I also tend to like found footage movies, so I'm hoping that I really like this movie.

The movie starts with a quote from Neil Gaiman, trying to class it up a little bit. The quote says "Monsters come in all shapes and sizes." I have to agree. The quote is also followed by a bunch of shots of different creepy dolls. Yikes. Unfortunately, after that we meet the two main characters, a couple of annoying teenagers who walk around with a camera filming people who yell at them to stop. And you thought YOUR home movies were boring. Plus the narrator kid is extra annoying because he goes out of his way to be "funny" which is really just obnoxious. I never agreed with people who said all found footage movies were tedious, like watching someone else's home movies, but they might have a point with this one.

The titular doll really is creepy though. She definitely commands attention every time she's on camera, which drew me deeper into the story. Plus when the narrator meets a cool girl who is also into horror movies, I liked her character right away (and annoying narrator was less annoying when he had a girl around to impress, which helped).

This movie might not be scary to you if you don't find dolls creepy, or if things like doors closing on their own or balls randomly bouncing down the stairs out of nowhere don't make you jump. I like this kind of thing, though. People say it's not scary because it looks like boring video someone really recorded, but that's exactly what scares me about this. It *does* look real, and things like this really happen around me, the floor creaks or the door slams on it's own, but what if it's not just the wind? What if it's something evil?!?! I find that creepy because it feels like it could happen.

There are some silly moments. Apart from the annoying personalities of the leads at times, there's the usual concerns about why people would keep filming even while certain things are happening (though they do solve this problem a bit by having the characters use wearable cameras to capture other things that just happen to pick up creepy things). I also particularly like a sequence when the lead is babysitting his toddler cousin when something scares her and she's too little to explain what it was. That especially rang true to me from my experiences watching kids. Overall, it takes awhile to get going, but I did end up enjoying this movie. Now please excuse me while I go make sure all my doors are locked and my house is evil doll proofed.