FINDERS KEEPERS

US, 2014, 90 minutes, colour.
Jamie Presley, Patrick Muldoon, Tobin Bell, Justina Machada, Kylie Rogers, Mary Pat Gleeson.
Directed by Alexander Yellen.

Finders Keepers is one of those familiar stories where a tragedy, preferably gory, happens in a home which then goes on sale and an unwitting family buys it and moves in only to experience something of the horror of what went on before.

The film opens with police going into the house, finding the dead bodies of a family, themselves being killed, and the audience seeing an intense young boy with strange eyes. We discover later that he has been put into an institution.

Moving in are a mother and daughter, having time away from the father who seems to have been philandering. As they unpack, the little girl discovers a voodoo-looking doll and becomes attached to it – with, of course, the spirit of the doll entering into the little girl and causing her to be malevolent, including deaths of those who cross her.

With the help of a friend who is an academic an expert on this kind of doll, the mother and father try to protect their daughter, going through a ritual to exorcise her.

They are successful – but, the young boy who is now grown up, escapes from his institution and lurks at a street corner…


1. An interesting and entertaining horror film? More accessible, less blood and gore?

2. The locations, San Francisco, apartments and streets, the universities lecture rooms, Monterey, the new house, the interiors, the neighbours, hospital, the psychiatrist’s office? Musical score?

3. The prologue, the police, the night, the discovery of the bodies, the deaths, the policeman and the policewoman? The glimpse of the boy with his doll? His blank eyes, the knife?

4. The familiar genre, the family occupying a house where a massacre took place? The aftermath, the effects? The investigation about the previous family? Events being repeated?

5. Alyson, Claire, arrival at the house, the estate agent and his praising the houser? The exteriors, the facade and the angle, repeated during the film? Rooms, Claire, unpacking, finding the doll in the floorboards, attracted to the doll? The mother and the doll, her cleaning the doll?

6. Life in the house, ordinary, Alyson separated from her husband? The visit of the nosy neighbour’s? Claire at school, her drawings, the children’s comment about the house, her scream? Her being taken to the psychiatrist, his interviews, her drawings, the next interview and the bruise, the issue of abuse, the psychiatrist accusing her mother? His later looking at the video, the sinister look from Claire? His death?

7. The deaths, the neighbour and the destruction of the cats? Going to the diner, the waitress and the offer of a new doll, her being tormented, fire, the diner, the explosion? In San Francisco, her father and his girlfriend, the gift of the doll, the tearing of the doll to pieces? The sinister remarks, attitudes?

8. The doll, its appearance, Alyson taking the doll to her academic friend, the lecture, the explanations, the links between the doll and people? possession?

9. Claire and her behaviour with the doll? Attached? Attacking anyone who took it away? The attempts to find some normality in the city, the doctor’s questions?

10. The effect on the parents? The effect on the academic, the assistant and her being killed? The lecturer, helping to find Claire, the attack, the dousing with petrol?

11. The doctor, trying to get in touch? The phone call from the doctor and finding him dead?

12. The advice about the eyes, Clare and her parents, the father and his pulling out of the eyes, the plan? His stamping on the eyes and the doll?

13. Everything seeming normal, the family together again?

14. The mother’s visit to the institution, seeing Zachary, questioning him, his disappearing – and the final image of him looking and smiling?