A thoughtful, clever and supremely creepy chiller.

Not for fans of gore-splattered high body count horror movies, this is a well-crafted and plausible psychological study of the effects on a young woman's mind of a very weird situation. Hired to be a nanny to a young boy while his parents take a holiday, Greta is shocked to find on her arrival at their remote country house that 'Brahms' is in fact an old-fashioned porcelain doll. The elderly parents have apparently taken to caring for this doll as if it were real, following the death of their real son some twenty years earlier. They leave Greta with a list of rules that must be observed, advising her meaningfully 'if you're good to Brahms, he'll be good to you.' Greta's initial instinct is to leave Brahms on a chair under a blanket. But Brahms is not just a doll and she is soon compelled to learn that the rules must be obeyed.

There is something inherently flesh-crawlingly creepy about old-fashioned dolls, and a splendid history of horror movies based on them. This is a worthy addition. I won't give away the ending, just to say that denouements usually rob the premise of all its power to horrify, but this one racks up the tension even more.