This week, Shudder‘s latest horror – Dolly – lands in cinemas, and it’s a nasty, gory gem that almost feels like it belongs in the 1970s. Made by Rod Blackhurst, and based on his creepy 2022 short film, Babygirl, Dolly is a step in the fright direction for doll-based horror movies after the disappointment of M3gan 2.0 with a slasher spin that trades both on the innocent creepiness of the toys and also a traditional hulking villain who should go down as one of the best new additions to the genre in some time.
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Dolly is mostly the tale of Macy (Fabianne Therese), a young woman whose only crime (along with her boyfriend, played by Sean William Scott) is being good-looking. You know how these things are in horror. After a romantic trip into the woods, Macy is abducted by a very large, very monstrous woman wearing an oversized doll’s head, who wishes to make her her baby. What follows is an 83-minute, nostalgic-feeling slasher that’s heavy on familiar tropes, and big on gory set-pieces. And it’s hard not to have some good old-fashioned deranged fun.
Rating: 3 out of 5
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Max the Impaler’s Dolly is a great villain | A little light on story |
| Delightfully depraved and gory | The twists are all very conventional, and it feels quite familiar at times |
| In place of scares, there’s a lot of good old-fashioned Tobe Hooper-like nastiness |
Dolly is the Best Thing About Dolly
I am perhaps too easy an audience for the creepies, because if you put me in a room with someone’s vintage doll collection, in broad daylight, with all assurances of safety, I would still be terrified. It’s universally true that dead staring eyes and porcelain faces, combined with the supposed innocence of infancy, can just f*ck you entirely up. That means new slasher villain Dolly (played by pro wrestler Max Lindsey, AKA Max the Impaler) had a bit of a head start; she’s a very transparent riff on Leatherface, with some of Art the Clown’s mime work (other than occasional whimpering baby noises), and a side of WWE’s Mankind.
Dolly is like the parody of the toddler who wants to make their doll their baby, but will, every now and then, allow the intrusive thoughts to win and smash their face in. Or shave them bald. Or remove limbs for no discernible reason. Perhaps there’s a wider commentary here on man’s innate capacity for evil that gets blunted as we get older? That’s probably a discussion for another time. Nonetheless, Lindsey plays Dolly like a very young child, with grotesque maternal impulses (culminating in a deeply deranged breastfeeding sequence), who is also very large. She could be forgiven for childlike innocence, especially with the character design, but she’s also capable of suplexing grown adults.
Fabianne Therese’s Macy is the other character who gets the most screen time, as the object of Dolly’s disturbing affection (Scott might be the most recognizable name, but he’s here for support more than anything). She does well with the material and sells her distress very well, even if the fight with Dolly is a little mismatched. I also have some issues with her part in the final shot, but given how little material there is (again, this isn’t a criticism as much as a simple fact), she gives a good account of herself. Ethan Suplee is also great as a late addition to the game.
Dolly is as Fun as it is Deranged (Without Doing Much New)
Dolly isn’t exactly a deep movie nor a radically transgressive one: there are more tropes than you could shake a rattle at, characters are more like caricatures, and even the aesthetic feels like a loving ode to Tobe Hooper’s 1970s work. That was achieved with a 16mm camera and some very knowing cinematography, which particularly comes to life when something gory happens. In the same way that Rob Reiner showed just enough of Misery‘s infamous ankle break to disturb generations, the edit here smashes focus over-intimately for maximum effect.
If you like your horror movies gory and your scream queens robbed of almost all agency (which rather amplifies the discomfort, by design), then Dolly really delivers. It has the same perversely comical spirit that Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and indeed all shlock horror copycats) did, thanks to Dolly and Leatherface both being clowns. There’s some great practical make-up work (especially for Sean William Scott, who is dealt a particularly rough hand), and the necessary CG work is well done. There isn’t, admittedly, a lot of backstory, and the actual story is mostly just an extended, increasingly tense game of chase, but sometimes that’s all you really need.
Fundamentally, Dolly is the kind of horror that makes you happy that Shudder exists. It’s a throwback to midnight shlockers, lovingly-crafted and lots of fun, and at less than 90 minutes, it doesn’t have much chance to outstay its welcome. Its twists are well-sign-posted, and it does rather feel like a waltz through someone else’s horror greatest hits collection, but familiarity doesn’t always have to breed contempt. And Dolly herself is a deranged joy who I’d quite happily see terrorize again.
Dolly is released in select theaters on March 6. Will you be seeing it? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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