TL;DR: A family inherits a creepy old doll and everything slowly unravels into confusion, obsession, and strange behaviour that may or may not be supernatural - Maybe worth a watch if you like unsettling ideas and don’t mind a story that drifts off track more than once.
A Doll, a Family, and a Slow Descent Into Confusion
Mamochka opens on a family dealing with a death and an inheritance that happens to be a doll, which probably already tells you nobody is going to have a peaceful afternoon here, and this doll shows up, and everything starts tilting in a direction nobody asked for.
Mark, played by Alexander Kollar, is the one who starts digging into it, and he does it in that very specific way men in films investigate things they absolutely should leave alone, calm on the outside, but clearly heading for trouble, as Mark slowly turns this into his personal obsession.
Mark is probably the most grounded thing in the whole film, which is both good and slightly frustrating, because he’s also the one who drags everything forward, where he starts off as a fairly normal guy, husband, dad, not asking for much beyond a quiet life, and then the doll enters the picture and suddenly he’s researching its past like he’s preparing a dissertation.
And yes, that past gets darker when he’s told it was made in a Nazi-era factory, but that detail lands with a thud in the story, then just sort of hangs there, because it doesn't really add anything meaningful, and it mostly turns into background noise that the film keeps pointing at without it really adding any weight to the rest of what’s happening, so it should matter more really, but it doesn't.
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The Doll Does Nothing
The doll doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t do anything you’d expect from horror props that want attention, as it just sits there, and that actually ends up being the most effective choice the film makes, as you watch scenes linger on it long enough for everyone in the room to start acting differently.
The problem is that the film doesn’t always trust that idea, because the doll’s presence should carry the weight alone, but it keeps adding extra layers that don’t always stick together, where it starts suggesting influence, then memory issues, then possible possession, then psychological breakdown, and at a certain point it just becomes a mix of explanations competing with each other.
There are moments though where that stillness works really well, and you can see how the film wants you to sit in that discomfort, but then it cuts away or jumps to something else that undercuts the tension it is trying to build, which was annoying.
A Story That Keeps Stepping on Itself
The way the story is arranged makes things harder than they need to be as well, where it jumps between moments that may or may not be real, trying to create the tension the film needs, but it mostly creates the feeling of trying to keep track of a conversation where half the sentences seem to be missing, so there’s a pattern where something plays out fully, then later it turns out it might not have happened, then something similar happens again in a slightly different way, and it ends up just repeating ideas in a way that slows everything down.
We also have a mysterious character that appears throughout, played by Dino Castelli, who seems important in theory but never fully settles into a clear role, and every time he shows up, the story shifts slightly, then refuses to explain what just changed, so it becomes the kind of writing choice that might have worked if it had a stronger anchor, but here it mostly adds more questions than the film can comfortably handle.
There’s also the family itself, especially the children, who react to the situation in ways that suggest something deeper is going on, and in particular, the son, Brian, has a few standout moments, but then there are other moments where the behavior becomes strange, or violent, or emotionally disconnected, but the film doesn’t always make it clear whether that’s the doll, the situation, or just people falling apart under stress, and that ambiguity might sound interesting on paper, but in practice here, it often just leaves scenes hanging without payoff.
Even with all that, there are parts that are decent, Kollar keeps things steady, which is important because without him the whole thing would drift even more, and Maya Murphy does solid work as the mother trying to keep the family from sliding further into chaos.
There are also a few visual choices that land well too, and the way the camera holds on empty spaces, or frames characters slightly off-center, helps sell the idea that something is always slightly out of place, but it just would have benefited from less complication and more confidence in those quieter moments.
Final Thoughts
Mamochka has a strong central idea and a few uncomfortable moments, mostly built around stillness and uncertainty, but it keeps tripping over its own structure, adding layers instead of sharpening focus, so the result is a film that holds attention in fragments but struggles to hold together as a whole.