Dolly
Macy and Chase are taking it in baby steps even though they are sure the other feels the same way, ready to move forward with their relationship but aware that she will also be taking on the role of stepmom, something which fills her with fear stemming from her own childhood, he trying to set her at ease with a hike through the peaceful woods to a scenic overlook.
The perfect moment planned, the sun turning the world golden, the ring hidden in his rucksack, instead they find what they joke might be a strange and disturbing art installation, dolls laid along the track and nailed to trees, then a child’s toy playing a tune nearby, Chase leaving Macy alone just for a moment while he goes to check it out but never returning….
Starring The Wrath of Becky’s Seann William Scott and John Dies at the End’s Fabienne Therese as Chase and Macy, directed by Rod Blackhurst from a script co-written with Brandon Weavil it is apparent that Dolly wears its influences broadly, Ethan Suplee’s character in the dysfunctional backwood kidnap and torture family named Tobe in homage to the late director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Transferred to lush Tennessee but maintaining the warm colour palette of golds and reds, nature in contrast to the interior of the lone house in the woods, overexposed and grimy as the flies hover around decaying flesh, Max the Impaler is the titular Dolly, masked and ruled by impulse, emotionally volatile as she tries to coddle her new toy and coax it to play then raging when Macy remains defiant.
Waking in a crib and dressed in ribbons and frills as though she were a doll herself, submitting to humiliating indignities she is obviously afraid and intimidated, but nor does she immediately seek to arm herself even when finding herself unaccompanied in the kitchen with all it offers, her every action accompanied by pausing and considering rather than seizing the moment to push what advantage she can or simply escape.
Recalling In a Violent Nature and similarly pointless, the intention to shock the viewer rather than a coherent narrative, the film undermines its established air of grim realism when a victim is punched clean through the chest leaving a hole for Dolly to peer through and with the arrival of a ranger whose inept behaviour abandons defies believability, any parallel between Macy’s apprehension as stepmom and her enforced role as surrogate child which might have given a hint of depth abandoned in a ditch.
Dolly will be in UK cinemas from Friday 6th March
