Rebecca Smith surrounded by characters from the movie Five Nights at Freddy's

Why are we so creeped out by robots and dolls?

UCLA doctoral student and ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ non-fan Rebecca Smith gets to the truth of terror

Rebecca Smith surrounded by characters from the movie Five Nights at Freddy's

UCLA College | October 24, 2023

Scary tales have long gotten mileage out of the creepiness of things like robots, dolls or clowns — case in point: the colorful-and-smiling yet murderous animatronics in “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which debuts in theaters Oct. 27. But what’s behind the idea that these seemingly wholesome, humanoid objects are hiding some sort of eerie secret?

We got the scoop from Rebecca Smith, a doctoral student in the UCLA Department of Comparative Literature who studies 16th- and 17th-century texts in Spanish, French and Nahuatl. Her research focuses on the smell of bloodshed as a religious and political tool in narratives of what has been called the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

In this special October installment of the UCLA College video series, “Silly Questions, Smart Bruins,” Smith digs into the ultimate purpose of the horror genre, a culturally specific Nahua fear and just how many of those five nights she’d be spending at Freddy’s.

(Watch the previous installments of “Silly Questions, Smart Bruins.”)