Dolly review

By David Dent

As a concept ‘elevated’ horror’s time was brief, fairly speedily replaced with ‘post irony’ horror, where filmmakers offer up a sort of meta ‘you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know’ take on things. Good examples have included Zach Cregger’s Barbarian and, to a lesser extent Weapons; Os Perkins’s latest offerings Longlegs and The Monkey; and POV slasher In a Violent Nature.

Rod Blackhurst is perhaps best known in genre circles as the co-writer of 2024’s Nightswim, this being his first solo feature as director. Filmed on 16mm in the Tennessee woods, the grainy film stock and general grotesquerie summon up memories of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (there’s even has a character called Tobe in the small cast).

An astonishingly simple setup has Chase (Seann William Scott) heading out into the countryside with his girlfriend Rachel (Kate Cobb) with the intention of popping the question (although the latter seems unsure about taking on Chase’s child as part of the deal).

But before the ring can be offered the pair come across a weird collection of dolls attached to trees, after which Chase encounters a huge creature wearing a doll’s mask (wrestler Max the Impaler, making their film debut). Chase comes off worse, Rachel is taken prisoner in the freak’s run down and doll filled home and treated as ‘Dolly’s’ child, with all the accompanying indignities. A series of ‘catch and escape’ scenes allow Rachel to achieve freedom only to find herself back where she started, while at the same time encountering another man locked in an upstairs room.

Unlike TTCM, which was all about the mood and pretty much gore free, here the violence is plentiful and very front and centre; but it’s almost ludicrous in execution, with injuries that would fell an ordinary human getting shrugged off, a bit like a backwoods live action Tom and Jerry episode. Things briefly get a bit psychedelic for some unexplained reason and, after 80 odd (very odd) gruelling minutes it ends.

A closing credits song references events in the movie and, archly, suggests a sequel is in the offing; after all, why create a character as horrendous as ‘Dolly’ and then not exploit it?