Movie Review: Dolly Deadly (2016)

Dolly Deadly is a film from Wretched Productions, written and directed by Heidi Moore, and starring Justin Moore as Benji. Benji is a child who lived with his mother and her dolls in a trailer until his mother died and was taken from him. Years later he is forced to live with his grandma Mitzy and her freeloading boyfriend. Benji’s only friends are his mom’s dolls. and they are good friends.

The first thing to mention about this film is that it has a very unique artistic direction. It is somewhat of a slow-burn and has a lot of imagery and story, but then takes a sharp turn into an inferno. It’s normally hard to pull something like this off in an indie production, but this film came together very nicely. There are a lot of cut scenes, and different artistic direction taken in shots from different characters’ perspectives, and they were all done well. Nothing seemed out of place at all. Given the many different perspectives that were used, this film did a great job of painting a picture for the audience.

The film follows Benji for the most part, who lives with his grandmother and her sleazeball boyfriend. They treat Benji like shit and barely feed him anything. They live in a trailer park and let’s just say that Mitzy isn’t the most caring grandma or cook. There are also a couple of local kids in the trailer park, but they just harass him as well, so his only friends are his dolls. He talks to the dolls regularly and slips into this fictional reality with them often where he is in an entirely different world of his own imagination. He does meet some other interesting characters along the way, like “Rock Bottom” and they are weird in their own ways as well.

Benji’s dolls start talking to him about revenge after he is consistently abused, and things start escalating from there. It takes a while for the pressure to build, but the payoff is rewarding.

Another thing to note is the cinematography. We mention this a lot in our reviews, because it’s very important, and when it’s pulled off nicely, it results in a good film. This is no exception. Dolly Deadly has a lot of good production qualities. The sound is good. It has a good score that mixes well with the scenes, and the mic levels for the actors/actresses were all great. The acting was good all around as well, which for having a crew of actors/actresses with little experience is very impressive and not common. One of the best things is the stop-motion animation in some of the scenes for the dolls. It’s really refreshing to see stop-motion in a modern film. It’s something that has been used in countless classic horror films and really works well here. The stop-motion scenes in this film reminded me of Puppet Master when they have to watch their friend suffering and it cuts to the puppets for reactions. Fantastic work all around with this. There were also some decent practical effects at some points in the film.

Overall, Dolly Deadly was a great indie production. We absolutely recommend it to any lovers of horror. Heidi Moore and team did a fantastic job. Dolly Deadly has a sequel coming soon, which we are really excited about. Make sure to follow them at the links below to keep up with the progress.

You can also see Dolly Deadly for free on Amazon Prime, so make sure to check it out there.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DollyDeadly
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alldolledupandreadytokill/
Wretched Productions Homepage: http://www.wretchedproductions.com/