Chase (Seann William Scott) and his girlfriend Macy (Fabianne Therese) go hiking in the woods where they encounter a creepy woman wearing a doll mask (Max the Impaler). She kidnaps Macy and takes her back to her oversized dollhouse in the woods where she dresses her up and forces her to play baby doll. When she doesn’t comply, her captor gets mad. REAL mad.
Dolly is a three-chord horror flick that tries to replicate the look and feel of an old school slasher, and it more or less succeeds. It’s a slight reworking of the old Texas Chainsaw motif except with infantilism and a killer who wears a doll mask taking the place of cannibalism and a killer wearing a mask made of human skin. (They also trade out chainsaws for shovels.) The fact that the filmmakers keep it simple and straightforward is what makes it work so well. There are no unnecessary characters or subplots gumming up the works. It’s just Macy trying to elude Dolly and reunite with her boyfriend.
I was genuinely surprised to see Scott appearing in something like this. There’s no trace of the old Stifler here. He does a fine job at playing a grown-up character for a change. In fact, you’ll probably feel sorry for him most of the time. Therese likewise puts in a solid turn and gets into her Final Girl role with spunk and fire. It’s Max the Impaler who makes the biggest impression as Dolly. She’s a professional wrestler that I’m unfamiliar with, but if this film is any indication she has quite a career ahead of her. I was particularly impressed how she was able to slip in little bits of humanity into the role which prevented the character from being just another generic hulking slasher.
No one rewrote the rules with this one. Nor did they need to. If you enjoy a good throwback slasher flick, you’re bound to eat this one up. This is the kind of film where characters go hiking in the woods and discover hundreds of dolls nailed to the trees and they CONTINUE TO WALK ALONG THE PATH. I mean they pretty much deserve what’s coming to them if you ask me.
And here’s just a taste of what’s coming to them: A shovel to the mouth scene (it’s a real jaw dropper), ear ripping, a hand through the chest, skull flattening, and a decapitation. We also get an icky changing table scene as well as the craziest breastfeeding scene since Barbarian. If that won’t entice you to watch it, I don’t know what will.
No comments:
Post a Comment