Just before Christmas, young Zoe, her brother Franklin, and their family move into a secluded mansion with a dark past. While the adults focus on renovating the place, the bored kids find a toy chest hidden in the attic and are delighted when the toys inside magically come to life. But bizarre events soon begin to take place – events that threaten the family’s lives.
David and Hannah Cashman (Dayo Ade and Dayo Ade), their three kids, and nanny move into an old house in the snowy woods of Washington. Both David and Hannah like to buy dilapidated houses so they can renovate them and then flip them for profit. Because it is Christmas Eve, they plan on staying in the house for the holiday and in the new year start renovating but when their two young kids, Zoe and Franklin (Zoe Fish and Saul Elias), find an old trunk in the garage filled with vintage toys, they form an attachment that goes beyond healthy. As their eldest child Alicia (Verity Marks), begins to see her younger siblings acting stranger with every passing minute, she also unearths old history about the house. She learns that the house used to be a home for young children and that after a boy died at the facility, his mother left his toys to all the other children who remained there. Shortly after, all the children mysteriously died and the house was closed down.
When Emmett (Ernie Pitts), the construction foreman who will be helping David and Hannah fix up the house, succumbs to a mysterious accident, David agrees to take him to the hospital in town. On their way, they are attacked by one of the children’s toys, causing the SUV to overturn in the middle of a snowstorm. Back at the house, Zoe and Franklin fall under the spell of the evil toys, who bring them up to the top floor of the house with the intent of forcing them to jump to their deaths, so they can join the souls of the children who died in the house years earlier but thanks to Alicia, Hannah, and their nanny Rose (Georgia Waters), they intervene and manage to capture all the toys with the intent of destroying them, once and for all but things don’t go according to plan and now the entire family is left fighting for their lives!
“Toys of Terror” brings the titular toys to life employing the use of stop motion, a method Ray Harryhausen used to great effect throughout his career in such films as “Jason and the Argonauts,” “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad,” and “Clash of the Titans.” However, in “Toys of Terror,” it proves the technique is outdated and obsolete and actually takes away from the movie instead of adding to it. I give director Nicholas Verso kudos for incorporating it into his feature but in the end, it is an effect that is best left in the past as it makes the toys’ movements look clunky and contrived. Even the human element doesn’t fare much better with all the performances feeling forced and unnatural. While we are given a brief backstory on the children who died in the house, we are never told how the toys came to life, maybe we’re just supposed to use our imaginations but last time I checked, a filmmaker is typically supposed to divulge this information to the audience so they aren’t left scratching their heads in bewilderment. “Toys of Terror” feels like a Hallmark movie with horror elements but the combination just doesn’t work.
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