Automatons made for the wealthy of the 19th century sit under studio lights so dim that each toy seems to occupy its own private darkness. The film centers on collector Jack Donovan's holdings, moving piece by piece through the collection: monkey-masked musicians, harlequins with unsettling human features, a doll that mimes an execution as a tiny guillotine falls, and a little girl figure who opens her dress to reveal a miniature garden inside. One automaton depicts a man attacking a woman with a knife, a reminder that these machines were not all built for charm. A narrator describes the mechanics behind each piece in a flat, cryptic tone, detailing the gears and cams that make glass eyes dart and stiff limbs sway in time with built-in music boxes. The camera lingers in close-up on the engineering rather than pulling back for context, so the craftsmanship, and the strangeness of what these Victorian toymakers chose to build, carries the film on its own.