Director: Rod Blackhurst
Writers: Rod Blackhurst, Brandon Weavil
Stars: Fabianne Therese, Russ Tiller, Michalina Scorzelli
Synopsis: Macy, a young woman, is abducted by a monstrous figure intent on raising her as their own child.
Rod Blackhurst clearly adores Tobe Hooper’s 1974 slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and has put all his efforts into making his feature, Dolly, a replica of abject madness in the South. Therein sits the primary issue with Dolly (scripted by Blackhurst and Brandon Weavil). Where Tobe Hooper’s film was in part investigating the economic failures in society that could create a family of cannibals in rural Texas, Blackhurst has no thesis beyond, “There’s a creepy masked killer with a creepy house in the creepy woods with creepy dolls.” And while most would admit that dolls in horror films are indeed creepy, and a killer who wears a porcelain doll’s mask is likely to unsettle, it’s not nearly enough to hang an entire movie on. Yes, Dolly is gore-tastic and will likely make the viewer squirm in places, but even at under 90 minutes there is almost no plot and the plot points given are either irrelevant or scratchings of poorly copied homework.
Split into chapters for no discernible reason, Dolly begins inside the home of the masked menace (Max Lindsey). A giant woman dressed in a red child’s playsuit cutting the fingers off a beheaded corpse. Flies buzz around the body and Dolly’s emotional state is telegraphed by using signs of hand posturing and stimming related to non-verbal autism. It’s one of the film’s greatest sins to decide to project intellectual difference and assumed disability as monstrousness. Yet here we are with it on full display. Dolly’s world is deeply infantilized with dingy floral wallpaper and dirty lace frills meeting shagpile carpet and doll after doll after doll. Dolly’s domain spreads out to the woods where she (presumably) has decorated the forest with her unending collection of vintage fetishes. An open grave is attended by a circle of dolls where the corpse will lay. Dolly is remarkably strong, lifting the body as if it were made of tissue paper. Dolly is “disturbed” yet methodical. Violent in moods, yet able to plan. Dolly is a terribly drawn character – the monster who wants to mother.
Macy (Fabienne Therese) plays with her boyfriend Chase’s (Seann William Scott) daughter Evy (Eve Blackhurst) in a car before he drops her off at his aunt’s house. Chase has plans to propose to Macy on a hiking trip. As Chase is speaking with his Aunt Macy, she is facetiming her sister Rachel (Kate Cobb) about how she’s not sure she wants to be a mom to anyone, especially as their mother was a monster. Macy does adore Chase and Rachel assures her that Macy will be a good mother. Macy’s uncertainty about her ability to mother is plot padding as it doesn’t pay off in any manner. Whatever her mother did is also abandoned as a plot device. The primary take away from this section is Chase is serious about Macy, and she about him, and soon they will be in one of his favorite places, a vast forest where he will ask her to be his wife.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this forest is also the forest where Dolly has created a bizarre garden of corpses and doll attendants. Macy and Chase come across the doll forest and Chase notes, “This is new.” Macy takes it all as a joke, or an art project and plays kissy with dolls who could represent Chase and herself. Chase would prefer she didn’t, and they go on to the scenic outlook where he plans to propose. Before he can do so they hear an odd lullaby from a toy radio and Chase decides to investigate. What’s waiting for him is Dolly and her shovel (Leatherface had his chainsaw, Dolly has her shovel). Chase approaches her gently, trying to assist her. For his trouble he is picked up like a doll himself by Dolly (Max Lindsey’s wrestling physicality is used to good effect) choking under Dolly’s grip. Dolly then throws him on the ground and uses the shovel to cut into his leg and then split his mouth so his jaw is hanging only by tendons.
Macy had jokingly told him not to go off the path but becomes concerned when he doesn’t return. She finds him positioned against a tree and Dolly ready to take her for her own. Although Macy is faster than the lumbering Dolly, she trips and knocks herself out in the woods. When she awakes she is dressed in babydoll clothing and placed in a cradle inside Dolly’s nursery. From that moment on, it’s a fight to the death so Macy can escape her deranged captor who thinks Macy is her baby.
Blackhurst then decides to go full Tobe Hooper madness, although his horror is gynocentric. Big “babygirl” wants to mother little Macy (everyone is little in comparison to Dolly). Any transgression by Macy is met with violence that’s familiar to Dolly. Dolly tries to feed her baby and when Macy refuses slop and the bottle, Dolly pulls out her breast which Macy takes a solid bite from.
It’s unsurprising that Dolly is a result of some tremendous trauma inflicted on her in the backwoods house of horrors. A wheedling voice through the wall (Ethan Suplee) attempts to help Macy get free and Macy, being not the brightest spark, listens to it. Trap after trap must be overcome for Macy to find her way back to civilization, and most of the time it’s pure dumb luck that gets her over the line.
Dolly has some very good practical effects (and some very bad SFX) and the cinematography by Justin Derry shooting on 16mm gives a particular crackle to the proceedings, as does the score by Nick Bohun. However, it barely exists as a script and drags itself from one gross out to the next with no care for the why and how of a narrative. Dolly wants to be a throwback, so much so one of the characters is called Tobe. What Dolly is amounts to very little. Great if you’re after something that acts as a particularly mindless slasher/survival horror. Not so great if you’re after a functioning work that goes beyond the premise of “Dolls, girls, women, mothers… horrifying!” Blackhurst relies on throwing enough blood and bone-cracking around that no one will notice how incredibly slight, hackneyed, and generally offensive his movie is.
