A Handmade Nightmare That Sticks

MOVIE REVIEW
Dolly
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Genre: Horror, Folk Horror, Survival, Psychological
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 23m
Director(s): Rod Blackhurst
Writer(s): Rod Blackhurst, Brandon Weavil
Cast: Fabianne Therese, Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee, Max the Impaler
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Fantastic Fest

RAVING REVIEW: DOLLY never lets the heart settle. It’s a grim fairytale, a film that treats survival as a messy rather than a triumphant montage. Rod Blackhurst leans into folk horror with the confidence of someone who knows the lineage—Grimms, New French Extremity, the scrappy terror of 70s American horror—and then pushes the tradition into something thornier and more personal. Macy is our core, but this is also the rare monster story that invites the audience to look directly at the mask and wonder what fragile human needs might be hiding underneath. The premise is brutally straightforward: a young woman is abducted by a monstrous figure who intends to “raise” her. The execution is anything but simple. The film’s sting comes from the way it frames captivity not just as restraint, but as emotional reprogramming—a ritual of forced dependency that echoes the most unsettling fairy tales.

Fabianne Therese plays Macy with clarity. She is neither a superhuman combatant nor a passive captive; she reads the room, calculates, adapts. The film withholds just enough information about her past to keep her choices alive moment to moment, emphasizing strategy over martyrdom. Opposite her, Max the Impaler makes an instantly iconic debut as the titular figure—feral yet purposeful, outwardly monstrous and strangely childlike. The performance is physical, sure, but what lingers is the character’s broken logic: the conviction that tenderness can be forced, that family can be sculpted out of fear. That tension—care warped into control—becomes the film’s heartbeat, as sick as it may be.

Blackhurst sets the tone with a throwback ethic that never feels like nostalgia-for-nostalgia’s sake. The movie’s DNA includes Tennessee woods, the grit of Super 16 that gives every splinter and smear a presence. You can feel the constraints of a 19-day shoot in the best way: scenes are designed to accomplish two or three things at once, building character and pressure without relying on cutaways. The mask—crafted with practicality—lands as a statement piece rather than a gimmick: expressive in its blankness. The overall texture keeps the film grounded in the real world while giving it the quality of a folk tale told too close to bedtime.

If the influence map points to New French Extremity and 70s grindhouse, the film is its own. DOLLY refuses to revel in cruelty; violence is sudden, purposeful, and often off-axis, arriving from choices rather than shock. Blackhurst’s approach to suspense feels like patient strangulation. Rooms are under-lit without being too dark, spaces are lived-in without being cluttered, and the staging favors lines of escape that are visible but costly. That cost-conscious design—every plan has a price—keeps the audience measuring risk alongside Macy.

It’s use of utilitarian horror soundcraft: less a theme you hum, more a pulse you internalize. The soundtrack also aligns with the film’s handmade ethos, mirroring the production’s do-it-yourself backbone. That spirit is all over the frame—the kind of cohesion that comes from collaborators who know each other’s instincts. It maintains the movie’s identity when the story shifts from a survival thriller to a deeply weird fairy tale about parenting gone monstrous.

Seann William Scott and Ethan Suplee are not mere cameos; they widen the film’s frame, reminding us that monsters aren’t the only danger and that communities can normalize harm in quieter, uglier ways. Macy is not simply lost in the woods; she’s stranded in a culture that routinely overlooks certain screams. What works best is the film’s refusal to explain Dolly away. We learn enough to build a silhouette of pain and longing, but the movie knows that over-detailing a monster can make it less. Max the Impaler’s portrayal acknowledges that the scariest captors don’t perceive themselves as villains; they believe they’re caregivers. That’s where DOLLY gets under the skin—by tracing the horror of care corrupted, of lullabies sung like incantations.

Thematically, DOLLY is less about shock than about the gravity of an imposed relationship. It’s a story about emotional labor weaponized, about the way caretaking becomes an instrument of erasure when consent is stolen. That’s where the folk horror pays off: the woods are not just a location; they’re a place where rules are rewritten and names are taken. The film earns its unsettling tone because it keeps recognizing Macy’s intelligence. She’s not a symbol. She’s a person building a plan with whatever broken parts the story hands her.

This is Blackhurst working in a lane that feels both personal and scalable. The influences are openly acknowledged, but the voice is his—practical, intimate, committed to character over shock tactics. The film’s ambitions and even a prequel potential are already in the air, and that makes sense: Dolly is a creature with a mythology worth teasing, not explaining to death.

DOLLY is physical and dark in the right ways as well as thoughtful in the ways that matter. It leaves bruises without feeling cheap, honors the roots of folk horror without embalming them, and delivers a monster you can’t dismiss once the lights come up. What may stick with you the most is the feel of the film; if it weren’t for being a modern story, you might never know when it was originally shot.

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[photo courtesy of BLUE FINCH FILMS RELEASING, GENTILE ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, MAMA BEAR PRODUCTIONS, MAMA BEAR STUDIOS, MONARQUE ENTERTAINMENT, SET POINT ENTERTAINMENT, WITCHCRAFT MOTION PICTURE COMPANY]

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