Mamochka (2026) (Blu-ray Review)
DIRECTED BY: Vilan Trub
STARRING: Alexander Kollar, Maya Murphy, Dino Castelli
RATED: UR/Region: O/1:78/1080P/NUMBER OF DISCS 1 (BD-r)
AVAILABLE FROM Bayview Entertainment
You know a horror movie is trying something different when it introduces a creepy doll and then refuses to let the doll do any of the things creepy dolls are contractually obligated to do. No knife. No running around. No sarcastic one-liners. No soul transfers. The doll in Mamochka mostly just sits there looking like it lost a staring contest with Satan sometime during World War II.
Directed by Vilan Trub, Mamochka follows a suburban family whose lives begin to unravel after inheriting an antique doll with ties to a Nazi-era factory. Because apparently inheriting grandma’s china set wasn’t traumatic enough.
Alexander Kollar does a solid job carrying the film as Mark, a husband and father whose curiosity about the doll gradually evolves into the kind of obsession usually reserved for conspiracy theorists and people who still argue about the ending of The Shining online. His descent into madness is convincing enough that you almost forget you’re watching a movie about a haunted doll that spends most of its screen time doing absolutely nothing.
The biggest surprise is that Mamochka isn’t really interested in being a typical killer-doll movie. Instead, it’s a slow-burning psychological horror film that would rather make you uncomfortable than make you jump. Sometimes that works brilliantly. Other times it feels like the screenplay got lost in its own haunted house and forgot to leave breadcrumbs back to the plot. Several dream sequences, reality-bending moments, and unexplained events pile up until you’re no longer asking “What’s happening?” but “Am I supposed to know what’s happening?”
Still, there’s something oddly compelling about the whole thing. The atmosphere is creepy, the performances are strong, and Trub deserves credit for taking a well-worn horror trope and steering it into stranger territory. The film occasionally trips over its own ambitions, but at least it’s aiming for something more interesting than “evil doll stabs everybody.”
Is Mamochka confusing? Absolutely. Does it answer every question it raises? Not even close. Will you spend the last ten minutes trying to decide whether you loved it or whether the doll somehow cursed your ability to understand narrative structure? Probably.
But in an era where every haunted doll movie feels assembled from spare parts left over from Annabelle, Mamochka earns points simply for being weird enough to stick in your head long after the credits roll.
