Released: 12th March
Seen: 3rd May
The 80s horror boom is something that still fascinates people, it was a true golden age of horror films where everyone was making truly glorious, insane shit that would end up becoming cult hits. Part of the reason this was possible was the rise of consumer video equipment, film cameras that used to be prohibitively expensive or the stuff of hobbyists could now be bought by just about anyone. You didn’t even need decent quality film, you could make an entire movie using nothing but VHS tapes and it could be released to video stores where people would actually watch it. People made some gloriously messed-up films back then, films that would’ve never made it past any studio producer with any sense of human decency. It’s that glorious period of cinema that feels closest to what Dolly is trying to do and it nails what it’s aiming for.
Dolly tells the story of a cute young couple, Macy (Fabianne Therese) and Chase (Seann William Scott), who are going off hiking in the middle of the woods. Things seem to be going well at first, the beauty of nature making it a lovely trip until the couple happen upon a scary-looking doll nailed to a tree… then another… and another… oh and then they find a 6-foot-tall mute woman dressed as a porcelain doll, complete with a mask, who has a big fuck-off shovel to beat them both senseless with. This is Dolly (Max the Impaler) and Dolly is going to take Macy back to their house and play with them, no matter what the hell Macy wants.
Dolly feels exactly like the kind of film that some stoners would make in the woods after seeing Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time ever and it’s fucking glorious. Were it not for the one scene where someone is making a video call to their friend, you would be forgiven for thinking this is a film that got lost back in the 80s and is only now being rediscovered, because it feels like it belongs with that classic era of horror. Its tastelessness is only matched by the absurd commitment to pushing that tastelessness as far as it can go. The film almost delights in finding new ways to make the audience squirm in their seat, like it’s a challenge to keep upping the ante with every new chapter that unfolds before the audience’s eyes. It’s trying to make you feel sick but in a twisted fun way, the kind that horror fans will get a kick out of because you can’t believe the film is doing the insane shit it’s getting away with.
There’s something about taking things that new parents do with their kids (breast feeding them, sending them to their room, changing a nappy) that becomes straight up nightmarish when forced upon a grown adult and this film knows it and revels in that. For a solid chunk of the film, it’s just Dolly trying to get her new baby Macy to be a good dolly and every single thing she does is so fucked up but in the best way. Dolly is truly a fascinating horror villain, from the broken porcelain face to that red dress (smart Dolly, red hides all the blood), the sheer visual of this lumbering creature is intimidating even before you throw a large shovel in its hand. Dolly wields a shovel like Jason wields a machete and it’s both hilarious and horrifying in equal measure. It’s also just an impressive performance, the silent killer can be so generic that it’s basically just a stunt performance but Dolly has layers. There’s a twisted backstory implied and you can feel the long history of pain in every single thing Dolly does… that doesn’t in any way make it a sympathetic character, but it makes it a character instead of just a creature that swings shovels and kills.
It’s also just nice to see a movie shot on good old 16mm film again, there’s a very specific grain to the visuals that really gives it that feeling of age that helps sell the twisted nature of the movie. A lot of potential problems are hidden with the grain, it makes everything feel just a little more real and a little more brutal than it might if this was shot on digital. It also really shows off the skill of the cinematographer who manages to match the visual stylings of those classic films (indeed you will absolutely notice some shots that just feel directly lifted from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its contemporaries) while also elevating things with creative framing or the use of colour that makes a lot of things really stand out.
Now obviously it can’t all be perfect, the film utilizes the chapter card style that many films use which honestly never really works and especially doesn’t here, it adds a level of pretentious bullshit that wasn’t needed in order for this film to work. It also definitely drags in the final act, it kinda feels like they had a good emotional ending that they built up to, but someone realised that they needed another 20 minutes of film to make something that hit feature length (you can kinda tell this started as a short film and then got remade as a feature just because it has a bit of a tendency to linger a lot longer than it probably should, though for most of the film that lingering fits the tone of the films this is emulating). The weak ending also really does kind of make Dolly feel a little less intimidating at the final hurdle, this is a character who you see stabbed and beaten and having portions of their body ripped off like it was nothing but… yeah, the ending does just kind of feel like they had to end it, though I do enjoy the way they end things with Macy.
Dolly is a truly glorious throwback, the kind where you could probably convince someone that this was a lost relic of a twisted era of horror. It’s a no-holds barred shock fest that’s gleefully trying to mess with the audience from the second it starts. It’s a sick, sick film and god bless it for that. Sure, it’s not going to reach the standard you might expect from a modern day film but if you like your films cheap, a little underwritten and built entirely around a fucked up killer then this delivers on that. This is for the Texas Chainsaw/Friday the 13th fans who haven’t had a good film to enjoy in a while, it’s about as close as you’re gonna get to that classic horror style without somehow managing to revive Blockbuster and search through the bottom shelves in the horror section. If you go into this one aware of the specific kind of film it’s emulating, you’re going to have one hell of a great time.
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