Movie Review: Mamochka

Mamochka Movie Review by Matt Boiselle

Mamochka – directed and written by Vilan Trub, and starring Alexander Kollar, Maya Murphy and Stanley Trub

Synopsis: Psychological horror about a Nazi-era heirloom doll that comes to haunt suburban dad’s every waking moments.

There’s something to be said about the horror trope of sticking a creepy-looking doll into a film and having it stick when it comes to fright effectiveness, let alone you’ve got to have some form of interesting back story in which to support the evil little moppet. In Director Vilan Trub’s slow-burn creeper, “Mamochka”, it’s not necessarily the doll that doles out the chilling effort, but what the doll manifests upon its victims. Let’s yank this one out of the box and see if it deserves to sit on the high shelf.

The movie centers around the small Gajewski family – Mark (Kollar), his wife Jane (Murphy) and young son Brian (Trub), and the after-events revolving around Jane’s mother’s passing and the item that they’ve been “bestowed” with following the loss: a small raven-haired porcelain doll that has quite the disheartening history. The mood around the house begins to take a dreadful shift when Brian acts unseemly towards his babysitter, and Mark is wracked with terrible nightmares involving harming his wife. He then meets a man at the local bar who claims to be a “doll doctor”, and when the little figure is closely inspected, the true nature of its evil is uncovered. The doll has deep roots firmly entrenched in Nazi history, even being fabricated using keepsakes from concentration camp prisoners…just the thought gives me the shakes. It dives into some deeply unsettling territory at that point, leaving the viewer conflicted about whether or not to push on with the remainder of the story.

What happens then is a whirlwind of directional roulette, compiled of multiple dream sequences resulting in manic behavior for Mark, especially with all that he’s had to contend with, making the remnants of the runtime work as a “try and keep up with this” format – don’t skip off to the bathroom or you’ll miss something you need in order for this to make sense. Trub’s directorial style here dials down the in-your-face scares and relies more on the psychological trauma that can occur when faced with multiple negative instances. The mood and acting performances do their damndest to pull “Mamochka” out of the sluggish spots, and there are times when it works well and proves that you can have a doll do some serious damage, even without being possessed by Satan or toting around a foot-long butcher knife.

The film is currently available to be watched on Tubi TV.