I recently watched this movie on a friend’s recommendation, though I wasn’t expecting much because she described it as being quite bad, and I wanted to see just how flawed it was. The story revolves around living puppets who kill people—a concept that feels tired when executed in better films. The film's main failing isn't the puppet design itself; this kind of premise has been done successfully before, and it’s a fairly common trope within horror. I even appreciated the technical aspects, thanks to skilled stop-motion animators. The real issue is the script, which seems insulting to the audience’s intelligence. It begins with five mediums arriving at a rundown hotel. They were summoned by a man they knew, who had previously married the hotel's young owner and passed away in the meantime. These mediums clearly disliked this man, and one of them suggests speaking negatively about him in front of his widow—a shockingly disrespectful act to perform at a memorial service. The absurdity doesn’t end there: two of these supposed mediums are preoccupied with their own sexuality, a pursuit that would be worthy of some of the best adult film artists. They're all fixated on the possibility that the deceased man discovered the secret of an old toy maker who took his own life in the hotel years earlier. The solution becomes painfully obvious when you notice the dolls moving freely around the hotel while everyone remains oblivious. And if screaming or calling for help would be a logical response to seeing a living wooden puppet try to slice you, then the characters in this film completely abandon all sense; they passively accept their impending doom. Does that sound ridiculous? The acting is subpar, consisting of performers from low-budget movies and television shows. No one stands out, they're all forgettable and overacting. Irene Miracle and William Hickey appear in minor roles, so brief that I don’t even consider them part of the main cast—they are essentially cameos. The true stars here are the puppets themselves. The stop-motion animation was state-of-the-art for its time, and it's exceptionally well done. The hotel setting is also convincingly recreated, and the film becomes more enjoyable whenever the puppets appear and begin to move about.

Source on TMDB