Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Have you ever wanted to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) but much worse? If your answer is yes, then Dolly (2025) might just be for you.
Director: Rod Blackhurst
Running Time: 83 minutes
Rating: 🌟
Description
Dolly (2025) follows couple Chase and Macy as they go on a hike in a secluded wooded area. Chase intends to propose so he leaves his daughter Evy with her aunt. While he drops her off, Macy is in the car discussing her doubts on the phone. She is confident Chase is proposing but is unsure whether or not he’s right for her since she didn’t want to be a mother.
Once out in the woods, the pair stumble across a swathe of creepy dolls strewn across the floor and pinned to surrounding trees. Macy remains light-hearted and jokes about how the dolls look like herself and Chase. However, Chase fails to see the funny side and presses on further into the woods.
Eventually, they reach the viewpoint which is where Chase wants to propose. Just as he takes the ring out to bend on one knee, a mysterious tune emanates from inside the woods. Of course, Chase has to check it out since what else would you do if you heard a creepy noise coming from a creepy forest?
While looking for the noise, Chase finds a woman wearing a porcelain mask sobbing over a hole in the ground. He understandably asks her if she’s alright but comes to regret it when “Dolly” proves not to be friendly.
Later, when Macy eventually finds Chase, Dolly decides the hiker will make a good addition to her doll collection. What ensues is a twisted rollercoaster of cruel and tortuous scenes that fail to give the viewer a moment’s rest from the gore.
Review
I’m not sure what possessed Rod Blackhurst to make a film about women and motherhood but here it is. The two women we see throughout the majority of the film are horrific caricatures of female stereotypes. You have Dolly, who is supposed to be ugly and off-putting. She is compared with Macy who is beautiful but not very wise. This pitting of women against each other is uncomfortable to say the least.
Then you have the blatant ableism that’s present for the duration of the film. It seems clear that Dolly has some form of PTSD especially in the scenes with her father. However, there is no let up on the demonisation of her character. We get no backstory, no insight into how she became the way she is. She is one-dimensional and serves only one purpose – to beat the hell out of the other woman. I wasn’t sure why Dolly’s father was even there when he offers no further information about his daughter beyond that she’s a ‘monster’.
The decisions Chase and Macy make within the film are clearly to advance the plot and feel completely unrealistic. Would you go check out a random creepy noise in the middle of the woods you’ve just hiked through to propose to your partner? No, of course you wouldn’t. I don’t think anyone would, the decision is made purely so Macy can get kidnapped and spend the next hour being tortured.
Cruel torture is present through Dolly‘s entirety and I have to wonder whether this film is just poorly-hidden fetishism. There are several scenes where Macy is dressed up as a doll being beaten by various objects, including a paddle. I don’t see how you can read scenes like this in any other way. The violence is also completely gratuitous with no artistic flair or commentary on violence against women in general.
Pacing and structure are some other issues this film exhibits. Despite near constant action scenes, the eighty-three-minute runtime feels never-ending and I kept checking the time to see how long was left. Interspersed between the scenes of violence towards Macy are scenes of the somehow still alive Chase dragging himself through the woods. With the injuries he sustains, I imagine it would take longer than it does to reach the house Macy is kept in.
The film is on 16mm to mimic 1970s films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). In fact, it’s plain to see Blackhurst is desperate to go back in time and direct the notorious slasher. However, he doesn’t have the skills here to create something on the same level so it simply falls flat. Although I didn’t like Thrash (2026) either, it bewilders me that Dolly (2025) achieved a higher score on Letterboxd.
One of my main issues with Dolly is the ending, especially the twenty minutes leading up to it. For some reason, there is an Alice in Wonderland-type montage that is bizarrely out of place. It seems Blackhurst decides the solid hour of torture might border on too much for the average audience and starts trying to lighten the mood. Either that, or he is trying to add some last-minute style. Regardless, it doesn’t work and ends up just being somewhat confusing.
The reluctance to be a wife and mother that Macy displays at the beginning also goes out of the window at the first hint of trouble. This feels weirdly propagandistic, as though we are only going to avoid trauma if we go ahead and start making babies.
Recommendation or Regret?
I need to stop picking random films on Shudder, don’t I? Honestly sometimes they’re so good and then I end up getting two or three duds in a row and feel like never watching a horror film again. That’s obviously an exaggeration but Dolly is truly a terrible film.
I’m not entirely sure who I would recommend it to besides people who share Rod Blackhurst’s fetishes. The pacing, character choices, extreme violence and poor editing leave a sour taste in my mouth (not to mention the sour milk scene).
Let’s leave The Texas Chainsaw Massacre alone and try to come up with something original and exciting next time, please. The homages to seventies horror classics might have a time and place but this is certainly not it. Overall, a wannabe with little substance, disturbing fetishisation and some of the most absurd character decisions of all time.
If you’d like to check out more horror film reviews, try Bodycam (2025) and Thrash (2026).
