Parents, really. Don’t even bother.
Not everyone should be a mother.
Take Dolly, the hulking, homicidal lunatic from this film (tellingly named Dolly). Oh, she wants to be a mom. She loves to abduct—er, adopt would-be children from the woods around her house. Never mind that most appear to be full-grown women: She’ll happily dress them and feed them and change their diapers. And she’ll never, ever raise her voice.
But Dolly doesn’t like to be sassed. And if you dare talk back—well, that’s a shovelin’ for you.
Dolly’s previous efforts at this form of motherhood have … not gone well. But she has another chance. Macy and her boyfriend, Chase, stumbled into the forest. Chase hoped to propose there, but their romantic foray got a little sidetracked.
Now, Chase is … indisposed, and Macy is lying unconscious in a crib. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop reading right here.
Still with us? You’re going to force me to say something positive about this movie? Well, OK. A character sacrifices a lot for another. Happy?
Now, please. Read a nicer review. May I suggest Hoppers, perchance? I Can Only Imagine 2? Literally anything else? Don’t make me write anymore. Don’t make me–
Oh, great. Here you are, reading another section.
Dolly likes dolls. (Imagine.) And, despite no visible means of income, she owns a lot of them. Sometimes, she likes to position a portion of these myriad toys in very creepy, vaguely religious-looking formations. For instance, dozens languish in what appears to be a makeshift shrine, complete with burning candles and a grotesque little centerpiece. A freshly dug grave is surrounded by dolls, apparently placed there to pay their respects.
When Macy talks to her sister about the possibility of getting hitched to Chase, Macy’s sister jokingly asks if she might be able to have sex with the best man at their wedding. Macy reminds her that she’s married with kids, to which the sister says that that never stopped their mother.
Chase and Macy kiss, and there’s some discussion about skinny dipping. We see a woman’s bare breast.
And with that, let me once again implore you—before we get to the Violent Content section—to turn your attention to something nicer. Sweeter. More wholesome. It won’t be hard to find a review that checks those boxes. Even Nosferatu would qualify. You don’t want to read on. You really, really don’t.
Apparently, you really, really do. (Heavy sigh.) All right, I won’t judge. (Well, maybe I’ll judge a little.) But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If Dolly was around during the French Revolution, France’s ironically named Committee of Public Safety never would’ve needed to roll out the ol’ guillotine. Dolly and her shovel would’ve taken care of business.
Dolly beheads one person on-screen (then holds up the head to entertain a horrified Macy). She cradles another headless body, and we assume that Dolly’s shovel is the reason the body is now headless. She partially severs someone’s leg with the blade of the shovel, and she manages to pry the jawbone mostly away from someone’s face. (The grotesque injury doesn’t seem to impact the victim’s ability to talk that much.)
Dolly and others brutally beat characters with the front and back of the shovel, with the ever-resilient Dolly taking several blows to her own porcelain-masked face. (The mask is remarkably sturdy.) Dolly hits somebody’s skull repeatedly with a shovel until it comes apart like a dropped watermelon.
But Dolly is plenty capable of causing injury without her favorite garden implement.
Somehow, Dolly pushes her fist straight through someone’s chest cavity (not punches, pushes), then withdraws her arm to stare through the gaping hole left behind. She grabs a victim’s ear and nearly yanks the whole thing off—then thoughtfully stitches it back with an entirely too long sewing needle. That partly removed jaw mentioned above? Dolly fully removes it eventually, leaving an incredibly grisly wound (and the victim still alive and blinking). She enjoys choking people, too—holding them aloft like Darth Vader did to that poor, poor Rebel captain on the Tantive IV during Star Wars—Episode IV: A New Hope.
And while Dolly may think of herself as an ideal mother, many of her acts of supposed kindness feel very much like assault: When Macy urinates out of fear, Dolly totes her to the kitchen, throws her on the table and puts a diaper on her. (We don’t see anything critical; indeed, the camera focuses on Macy’s horrified face.) When Dolly tries to feed Macy, she starts with solid food, which Macy spits out. She moves to force-feeding Macy with a bottle, but Macy doesn’t love that either. So Dolly whips out a breast and forces that into Macy’s mouth: In response, Macy bites Dolly and (the movie suggests) rips off a hunk of skin with her teeth.
Technically, this next bit is a spoiler, but for a movie like this, I don’t care a whit: Dolly has also imprisoned her father, who apparently abused her as a child. He holds Macy hostage, cutting her cheek with a shard of glass as he shouts, “I’m gonna do her like I done you!” (He also brags to Macy that he taught his daughter well.)
Characters get stabbed in the side, gut and back with various stabby apparatuses. Someone gets run over by a truck. The finger of a corpse is clipped clean off. A severed head is mounted on a doll’s body. Blood spatters and spurts during a number of scenes. Dolly’s face, when visible, seems to have been grotesquely burned or mottled by some horrible disaster. Several corpses, in various states of decay, decorate Dolly’s home. Dolly’s father cryptically shouts at his daughter, “You should’ve killed me, baby girl! You should’ve killed me and buried me with the rest of them!”
I feel like I need to wash myself now. All right, we’ve gone this far … might as well finish this review.
We hear 25 f-words. We also hear two s-words and a few other profanities, including “a–,” “b–ch” and “d–n.” God’s name is misused four times, one of which comes with the word “d–n.”
In a post-credits scene, someone spits chewing tobacco into a cup. During the credits, we read, “Uppers provided by Mad Priest Coffee Roasters.”
Macy urinates and vomits during the course of the film. (Dolly tries to press her face into the latter, but Macy manages to resist.)
Before the movie’s chaos begins, Chase jokingly asks his daughter (from a previous marriage) to confirm whether a unicorn’s poop smells like flowers. (She says that indeed it does.) Macy asks Chase to “pull my finger.”
Dolly is based on a short film made by Rod Blackhurst and is written, directed and produced by—guess who? Rob Blackhurst. In an interview with the website PopHorror, Blackhurst makes one of the most cogent arguments as to the importance of services like Plugged In.
“When you grew up in a town with no traffic lights, then you end up watching films that you probably shouldn’t at a very young age, and they end up leaving a mark,” he says. “They just kind of worm their way into your DNA and the choices you’re making.”
Blackhurst may have chosen to make this vile little film because he was allowed to watch vile little films.
So let that be a cautionary warning: Using Plugged In can save your children from a future of making horrifically gory films on shoestring budgets. And in so doing, you might save a hapless Plugged In reviewer from a bit of misery, too.
Kidding aside, Dolly is devoid of ethical merit and proud of it. It is a ridiculous exercise in gore production—and unapologetically so. When I say that this is a sick, twisted, abhorrent piece of work, its creators may take that as a compliment. It’s possible that Blackhurst might print this review and stick it to his refrigerator door.
But for the rest of y’all out there, here’s my advice: Do the opposite of Macy. Do not linger. Do not pause to see if the terror is truly dead. Run. Run quickly. Because this film’s horrors only begin with Dolly.
And let’s be honest: If enough people read this review and heed its warning, perhaps I won’t be subjected to Dolly 2.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
