Dolly Dearest

Year: 1992
Director: Maria Lease
Writer: Maria Lease
Genre: Horror: Evil dolls

I have a real love/hate relationship with evil doll/toy/dummy movies. For whatever reason, the idea of those inanimate objects coming to life really scares me - especially dummies. I think in the case of dummies it is their weird mouths. Anyway, so because of that it took me a really long time to ever watch these kinds of films. Child's Play, for example, took me years to sit down and watch (and then I loved it). Magic and other films I basically had left untouched until really deciding to deal with this.

Dolly Dearest is the story about a doll possessed by the spirit of a demonic child. This is fine and good but the movie itself fails because the doll has no real presence. It's not a witty, wisecracking thing but it isn't completely mute and terrifying either. It was at the start though, but then became increasingly silly as the film went on. When it started talking I basically lost it and couldn't take things serious anymore.

To say the movie is without merit though would be wrong. It tries to be something different. Minus the whole "possession of doll" thing it doesn't attempt to crib heavily off other films. The idea of a family moving to Mexico to run a factory manufacturing dolls makes sense, I guess. It certainly added a flavor you usually don't get in horror films too. Although of course it did have the trope of a religious and/or superstitious native of the region who knew something was up.

Overall it wasn't that great but it wasn't a nightmare either. If you're really in need of doll movies you could do worse than watching this. I guess that's a compliment!