Dolly

This is a slightly amended version of the review for Dolly’s 2025 UK cinema release.

How you reacted to the X-Files episode Home, but more so The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, may go some way to how you take to Dolly.

The film opens making no bones that this is going to be a harrowing experience, with loads of dolls, the sound of flies all around, a sense of complete destitution and a headless body cradled by a figure in a mask, in a child’s red dress with white frills.

Macy (Fabienne Therese) is with her partner Chase (Seann William Scott) dropping of his daughter so that they can have time to themselves. Macy is at a crossroads, not sure if being a stepmother is what she signed up for, although by all accounts, and her friend’s advice, Chase is a good one.

They decide on a forest hike where they find themselves surrounded by dolls hanging off the trees, everywhere. It’s creepy to say the least. They are separated and Chase has a terrible confrontation with Dolly (Max the Impaler). It’s not long after that Macy encounters Dolly, is captured and taken back to her house.

At home Dolly dresses Macy as a child and goes about treating her as if she was her offspring. In a bizarre, and at times nauseating sequence, Dolly tries to feed and change Macy. Even a stabbing doesn’t put her off, Dolly just spanks Macy. Meanwhile Chase is still alive, barely and they are not the only ones in the house.

Director Rod Blackhurst, co-written with Brandon Weavil have expanded their short film Babygirl (2022) and developed an interesting, deceptively complex story. That works well in a film that is very bloody and violent. The practical effects are excellent not least the hideous featureless mask that Dolly wears.

Another major factor is the palpable sense of decay that hangs inside and out the house, in fact the entire film, which is down to the use 16mm. It adds another layer of grunge to what is an already a grimy film. As gruelling as it is however, as the story develops the destitution helps to provide an element of sympathy for Dolly, just an element.

There is an element of dark comedy here if the viewer decides that some bits are just too ridiculous. These tend to be while Dolly is at her most pathetically maternal with Macy, who is by no means at her wits end and all the while plotting an escape, if necessary, using extreme violence.

Dolly will be on Shudder from 24 April 2026.