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Nothing is quite as disturbing as a fake baby. You’re watching a movie or show, having a great time, when this imitation of life and all things wonderful appears to flop all over the screen and remind you that we’ll all eventually die. That morose balance between new life and sudden death is exactly what Apple TV+’s newest series Servant is all about.
Executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan and created by Tony Basgallop, Servant focuses on a married couple whose baby son tragically dies. To help cope with this loss, Sean (Toby Kebbell) gets his morning wife Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) a Reborn doll. But once she hires a nanny to watch this doll, things start to take a turn from the emotionally stable to the bizarre.
If Shyamalan’s name is involved, you know it’s going to be creepy. But Servant is far from the first show or movie to capitalize on making new life disturbing. In honor of Servant’s premiere we’ve rounded up the best (or should we say worst) fake babies in Hollywood history.
'Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part 1'
Where do you even start with this monstrosity? Do you start with the fact that practically all of Twilight revolved around the eventual revelation of Edward and Bella’s half-human, half-vampire baby? Do you point out Renesmee’s first character design, which looked like a Chucky doll with pouty lips? No matter how you cut it, it’s all horrible. Thank god Renesmee grew up quickly.
'American Sniper'
You have to employ a particular brand of horrifying for a baby doll to upstage a Clint Eastwood-directed thriller about U.S. Navy SEALS. But that’s exactly what happened to Bradley Cooper in American Sniper. The prop baby was so distractingly clearly fake and lifeless, it became the butt of the joke for viewers and critics. Even Cooper himself couldn’t believe it.
'Trainspotting'
One of the most nightmarish scenes from this movie about heroin addiction revolves around a baby. At some point Allison’s (Susan Vidler) baby dies, presumably because of neglect. What follows is a hallucination that involves Baby Dawn crawling on the ceiling and turning her head around 180 degrees. It’s not the spookiness of this scene that earns it a place on this list; Dawn is supposed to be creepy. It’s how crass the CGI looks. If Ally McBeal’s dancing baby went full Exorcist, this would be the result.
'Dawn of the Dead'
Even Zack Synder isn’t immune to bad fake babies. In his 2004 remake of this horror classic, a zombie baby is introduced. But this kid has been layered with so many CGI skins it looks like something from a half-finished video game.
'Servant'
It’s not that Servant’s fake baby is bad, per se. It looks just like every other Reborn doll. But seeing Nell Tiger Free snuggle with its rubber head and Toby Kebbell pick it up by its silicon foot gives us the willies. Not-Jericho is creepy to the max, and it’s already given this author nightmares.
