Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Rod Blackhurst
Starring: Kate Cobb, Fabianne Therese, Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee, Max the Impaler
Horror, like music and food, is a seasonal pursuit. As the night draws in and mint strawberry salads are replaced by bubbling curries of parsnip in coconut milk, the soundtrack evolving from the sunshine of pop girlies towards the warming contemplations of ambient and electro (Aphex at the moment), so too the films silently looping in the background (always horror, the most visual of genres) adjust to the darkening quarter. The lengthening shadows of ghost stories and high gothic come to eclipse the bright and leafy energy of summertime slashers. Maika Monroe in her swimming pool, Angela hissing at the cooling night, Constance driving her fist into the throbbing throat of her assailant (Just Before Dawn, the best ever); these girls of summer hibernate in autumn as Elsa Lanchester and Thomasin bring in the winter. Not only the days but life itself seems longer in summer, and the slasher's knife edge urgency emphasises this dynamic with brutal efficiency. The clear rules and formalities of the subgenre suit the ease of the days too, and are almost comforting in their diurnal rhythms. So, it is incongruous that Rod Blackhurst's (co-writing duties shared with Brandon Weavil) Dolly, with its staple shack in the woods hosting a terrible monster, should arrive at the start of autumn... Is there space for one last summertime scare?
In the excellent case of Dolly¸ there certainly is. Except there is nothing fucking relaxing about Dolly, which, aside from the narrative formality of setting up a premise, is a deeply unpleasant and gruelling watch throughout. We open with familiar genre indicators of lachrymose music box tinkles and scratchy film stock, nostalgic textures of bleeding red and smudged lighting, as we see a hulking figure in a doll mask (Max the Impaler) secateur the fingers off a decaying corpse in a fly riddled room. It's a clear statement of Dolly's singular purpose: an undiluted, sincerely atavistic genre impulse to cajole and revolt. This is an exceptionally cruel movie. Cut to sweet couple Rachel (Kate Cobb) and Chase (Stifler), off to the mountains for a camping trip wherein, we discover, a nervous Chase plans to ask for Rachel's hand in marriage. Let's hope that nothing bad happens to them, eh readers?
Things go awry when the two see, in moments of sublime creepiness, weathered china dolls hung from trees, before discovering the dismembered corpse of earlier in a shallow grave. These moments are unsettling, but paced carefully, with slightly longer takes and pauses which exemplify the weirdness. Make the most of it, though, as when the titular character appears, she brings a chaotic velocity with her that does not let up for Dolly's (mercifully) compact running time. With a vigour which even Annie Wilkes might balk at, she sets about Chase's limbs and face with a garden spade and gives chase to the nonplussed Rachel. Resourceful and fiery yet shit scared and vulnerable, Rachel is the first and final girl of the narrative: a survivor who does everything she should (she runs from her apparently dying paramour instead of tending to him: the graphic resonance of his ensuing narrative is iconic in waiting. Jaw dropping) but, in keeping with the unforgiving cruelty of Dolly, is yet still brutalised and recaptured.
Is there room for a camp reading of Blackhurst's singularly abrasive film, configuring the figure of Dolly as satirising the heteronormativity of family dynamics? She wants a baby, and grown-woman Rachel will do for her to enact the conditioned motions of motherhood. There is bleak psycho-horror as in the shack homestead (imagine the set of a children's TV show but corroded; cracked plastic, faded wallpaper, broken toys. It's a film that you can almost smell) Rachel is tortured and mollycoddled in equally unpalatable ways. To wit, she wets herself in fear at Dolly, who proceeds to "change" her on the kitchen table: the humanity. As body parts are stretched and torn and cut (including a ripped nipple, a tit trauma I'm not sure I will ever fully recover from), I found myself looking away from the lingering close ups and their convincing gore, which comes courtesy of evil artisan Dan Martin. Who will survive and what will be left of them, indeed.
It isn't only the supreme quality of Martin's fleshy effects which elevates Dolly, but the film's sadistic humour in pushing the spectacle and its unflinching focus on pain which marks out its lurid joys. More in line with the imperial excruciation of Bring Her Back than this year's mainstream horror hitters like Sinners and (the boring) Weapons, Dolly is a dark reward for the hardened genre traveller to seek out. A grimly perfect film which achieves all within its pitiless parameters, with imagery and implications that, despite the hyperbolic presentation, are hard to shake off. A horror for all seasons, Dolly delivers.
