There are plenty of haunted houses — and hotels and summer camps — in horror movies, but some of the most disturbing cinematic scares are thanks to evil objects. Like the eponymous toy in Oz Perkins’ new movie “The Monkey,” his follow-up to last year’s “Longlegs.”
While some things are obviously not going to be good news, like the hand of a dead man, any inanimate object can be cursed, whether it’s a TV, video tape, or mirror.
Here are more cursed object movies in horror movies we’ll never forget.
The Wooden Man in “Oddity”
You know something’s about to go down when oddities dealer Darcy (Carolyn Bracken) shows up at her former brother-in-law Ted’s isolated house with a life-size wooden statue. Her twin sister was brutally murdered on the spot not long ago and Ted has already moved his new girlfriend in, so this strange “present” isn’t exactly welcome.
Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy’s second feature builds its atmosphere of dread slowly, but the Wooden Man does not disappoint. You also get a glimpse of another curious object from his first film, “Caveat,” a drumming rabbit toy that is, happily, nowhere as creepy as Perkins’ monkey.
The TV in “Poltergeist”
The famous house in this ’80s classic is supernatural central because it was built on an old Indian burying ground, but director Tobe Hooper and producer Steven Spielberg put a new twist on the genre by having the malevolent spirits come through the TV late at night. (And yes, networks did use to sign off for the day, leaving nothing but snow if you kept your set on.) The family’s firm rejection of all TVs at the end of the movie is also, in a way, a pitch for why it’s better to go to the theater. (Haunted theaters are an entirely different list.)
The home movies in “Sinister”
Advice to people who buy older houses: First of all, don’t go in the attic. If you find several reels of home movies in boxes, do not watch them. And if the gruesome killings in the movies start up again, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
The video in “The Ring”
Some of us are still kind of afraid of our TV and VHS after this spooky thriller, in which a cursed videotape kills anyone who watches it within seven days. One of the best American J-horror remakes that still makes us shiver.
The mirror in “Oculus”
An evil mirror that drove both of their parents mad comes back into the possession of Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) as adults. They decide to spend a night alone with it to learn its secrets and try to outwit it. A great early film from “The Haunting of Hill House” director Mike Flanagan.
The dummy in “Dead of Night”
Before that “Twilight Zone” episode, that movie with Anthony Hopkins and Slappy from “Goosebumps,” there was this stellar anthology segment in which a ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) is slowly taken over by his evil dummy.
The embalmed hand in “Talk to Me”
An embalmed hand becomes a party trick in this knockout Australian entry: Bored teens, including Mia (Sophia Wilde) take turns holding it and talking to the dead. Except Mia takes the trick a little too far in hopes of connecting with her dead mother.
The Necronomicon in “Evil Dead II”
The cornerstone of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” trilogy (and Fede Alvarez’s 2013 remake) is this ominous-looking book of the dead that — obviously — dooms anyone who reads from it.
The masks in “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”
In this Michael Myers-free sequel, there’s a sinister plot behind Silver Shamrock’s heavily advertised Halloween masks. Extremely unpleasant things happen when anyone puts on one of these accursed things.
The statue in “The Night House”
Beth (Rebecca Hall) encounters this unsettling piece of artwork as she tries to figure out why her late husband killed himself in this film by “The Ritual” director David Bruckner.
And an honorable mention from TV…
The Dybbuk Box in “Paranormal Witness”
One of the scariest episodes of this Syfy series involved a mysteriously haunted wooden wine box, which supposedly used to belong to a Holocaust survivor. Kevin Mannis claimed that after he bought it, it caused his mother to have a stroke, among other horrors. He sold it on eBay, where it went on to wreak havoc of all kinds to each new owner, including … Post Malone! Years later, Mannis admitted he had made up the whole string of horrible events because he wanted to create “an interactive horror story in real-time.” That he certainly did.
The episode, which is streaming on Peacock, inspired the 2012 movie “Possession,” starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but the TV version is far superior.
