A gigantic figure with a doll mask abducts a young woman to raise her as their baby.
It is the script that does the damage.
This is one of those films where you cut straight to the chase – Dolly does it. Writer/director Rod Blackhurst adapts his own short Babygirl (2022), with IFC Films and Shudder fully backing his vision. Shot on 16mm, the film has a raw, textured aesthetic that immediately signals intent. It is well-acted and shot, indications that Blackhurst understands the tone he is aiming for and how to achieve it technically.
The problem is not how it looks or sounds. The problem is what it is trying to say – or rather, how it says it. Tight off the bat, the narrative feels overly familiar. Isolation in the mountains. A deranged antagonist. Captivity and torture. These are not inherently flawed elements – far from it – but Dolly struggles to elevate them beyond their well-worn foundations. Even when it attempts to differentiate itself, particularly through its… unconventional approach to torture, it veers into territory that feels less disturbing in a meaningful way and more uneasy for the sake of it – like a perverse fetish. The result feels like: What am I watching?
There is a sense that the film is reaching toward the legacy of genre staples like Wrong Turn (2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), The House of Wax (2005), and The Hills Have Eyes (2006), yet it could never earn its place among them. The clichés accumulate, and instead of tension building, a kind of detachment sets in. And that drags the editing down, where editor Justin Oakey has to edit it in a way that actually makes sense. But despite his efforts, he can’t, and the pace and rhythm are all over the place.
Adding to this is the decision to give its physically imposing antagonist an almost superhuman edge – a narrative gimmick that, rather than heightening the stakes, encourages passive acceptance. You stop questioning. You stop engaging. You simply wait for the end.
What ultimately keeps Dolly afloat is Fabianne Therese. Her close-ups, in particular, carry an impactful, raw emotional weight that the script often lacks. She makes the difference between caring for the hero/ine and not caring at all, as seen in Until Dawn (2025): https://kaygazpro.com/until-dawn-2025/ – yet another one that tried to make it to the pantheon. Seann William Scott and Ethan Suplee are always great in their roles, but please remember that Scott was once one of the people who could make you laugh the most.
IFC and Shudder continue to experiment – sometimes striking gold, sometimes missing the mark. This one leans toward the latter.
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