Pulverising The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and early ’00s French extremity into a bloody mincemeat until they become one and the same, Rod Blackhurst’s Dolly makes no attempt to hide its influences. Feeding Frontier(s) and Calvaire into the sausage-maker along with Tobe Hooper’s genre-defining classic, it makes up with intense flavour what it lacks in originality. Yes, it’s yet another Grindhouse wannabe about a mute masked killer, but there’s plenty of life in the old dog yet. Or doll, as it were.

Loved-up Macy (a fierce Fabianne Therese) and Chase (Seann William Scott!) are vacationing in remote Tennessee when they encounter the titular Dolly (wrestler Max the Impaler), an overgrown woman-child on the lookout for a new toy dolly. Disposing of Chase, Dolly kidnaps Macy, dragging her back to the family home where all manner of indignities and torment await. Yes, it’s yet another Grindhouse wannabe about a woman being tied up and brutalised all over the house, but Macy can more than handle her own.

Shot on gritty, down-and-dirty 16mm, Dolly perfectly emulates the look and feel of a lost Grindhouse classic. Don’t let the presence of big (ish) names like William Scott and Ethan Suplee (unrecognisable to the point where I had to rewind the film to double-check) fool you – Dolly is as gnarly as they come. While it doesn’t go quite as far as those it was influenced by, it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow homage merchants Hatchet and In A Violent Nature as a future cult favourite. Slasher cinema may not have needed another silent masked monster, but it could do far worse than the oddly sympathetic Dolly, who boasts an original look and a mean shovel arm, along with the whole Livin’ Doll thing.

Dolly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but nor does it seek to. Instead, it’ll tear that wheel straight off the truck and clobber you over the head with it, until you too have had your brain turned into mushy headcheese.

 DOLLY premiered at FrightFest Halloween on November 1, 2025