A woman buys a creepy looking vintage baby doll. She goes off to a continuing education seminar and her boyfriend Alec (writer/director Alec Balas) is left home in their apartment with the ugly doll. Before long, it starts showing up in odd places and is even heard crying in the middle of the night. Is the doll really possessed or is the guy just going crazy?
Balas tries for the minimalistic A24 approach. He gives us many long scenes where nothing happens, but the camera lingers on that nothing for so long that it makes you think something’s going to happen. Most of the time though, it doesn’t. There’s even the typical accompanying swelling music on the soundtrack that gives you a Pavlovian response to make you anticipate a jump scare, and then… nothing. Such scenes include our hero loading a dishwasher, cleaning out the lint trap of his dryer, and making his bed. Whatever possessed Balas to make a movie that focuses half the running time on him doing household chores? I get it. I don’t like chores as much as the next guy. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it the basis for a horror flick. Seeing someone fritter their day away with menial tasks is not my idea of “horror cinema”, you know what I mean?
Demon Doll from Hell is also disappointingly low on your typical killer doll movie cliches. In fact, the doll is pretty much forgotten about in the second half when a specter wearing a black cloak and Michael Jackson mask does much of the heavy lifting. Why make a movie called Demon Doll from Hell if the doll doesn’t do anything demonic or hellacious?
According to IMDb, the budget was only $100. One thing I can say for Demon Doll from Hell is that it certainly looks more expensive than that. Not much more expensive than that, but still.
No comments:
Post a Comment