Frozen Charlotte

Decidedly middle-of-the-road. It started out pretty scary (or I was just home alone), and some of the ideas were creepy, but it was too gory for me, among other things. It really does start out as a cool story: girl goes to visit her cousins, one of them died not too long ago but they're not allowed to talk about her, really creepy dolls, creepy folk song to go along with the creepy dolls. The creepy dolls are good, but they're supposed to go along with the creepy folk song/story and it really doesn't fit together, nor does it fit with their purpose. The whole idea behind the doll is that they're based on this folk figure, Charlotte, who went to a ball and didn't want to wear a coat because it would cover up her dress so she froze to death. The dolls then are homicidal, whispering maniacs that make children do unspeakably bad things and warp their minds. How do these two things link up? Not very well, I'll tell you that. The dolls do enjoy a good bit of freezing, but they also enjoy run-of-the-mill murder and making children insane. There was a good bit of psychological thriller between the siblings, but not enough and too easy to see and predict. Plus, the dead sibling being named Rebecca, I thought it would be much more like the novel Rebecca, which was an actually good psychological thriller. Nope. And, last but not least, I'm really tired of the "I'm just evil," trope. Can we have evil with a purpose, please? The main baddie was just evil. It makes them really easy to hate and defeat and there's no genuine struggle. Boring!. So anyway, some good foundational ideas poorly executed. Also, a hint at a creepy inter-cousin romance at the end. Ew.