There’s a particular stink to proper backwoods horror — sweat, rust, sour milk and something coppery lingering in the air — and DOLLY absolutely bathes in it. This sucker is primed for discovery and it is absolutely deserving of it, too.
Directed by Rod Blackhurst and landing in UK cinemas from 6th March via Vertigo Releasing in association with IFC and Shudder, this is a savage little beast that feels ripped straight out of a grimy 16mm nightmare. Expanding his earlier short Babygirl into a feature, Blackhurst delivers a tribute to the feral snarl of ‘70s slashers, but this isn’t nostalgia with a wink. It’s a clenched fist.
The setup is simple and sick and damned effective. It’s a proposal gone wrong as Macy, played with raw nerve by Fabianne Therese, has her world turned upside down and is abducted by a hulking, near-mythic figure known only as Dolly.
But this isn’t a quick kill and dump scenario. Dolly wants a child. Wants to nurture. Wants to mold. The horror here festers in that warped domestic fantasy — the forced bedtime rituals, the suffocating affection, the looming presence in doorways. It’s kidnapping reimagined as grotesque parenting, and it crawls under your skin.
Max The Impaler, making their feature debut as the eponymous monster, is a revelation in brute force. There’s no CGI slickness here, no ironic detachment. Just sheer physical dominance and a sense that if Dolly gets close enough, something is going to snap — bone, joint, spirit. When the violence erupts, it’s not stylised. It’s ugly. Flesh tears. Faces split. The camera doesn’t flinch, and neither should you. This is gore that feels sticky and immediate, the kind that makes you shift in your seat and check your pulse.
The supporting cast adds weight to the nightmare. Russ Tiller, Eve Blackhurst, Michalina Scorzelli and Kate Cobb orbit the carnage, while the presence of Ethan Suplee and Seann William Scott adds an unexpected layer of grime to familiar faces. Seeing performers known for broader work dragged through this mud only amplifies the unease. Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels clean.
What makes DOLLY linger, though, isn’t just the arterial spray. It’s the emotional rot beneath it. This is a film about possession masquerading as love, about control disguised as care. Blackhurst understands that the nastiest horror is intimate. The kind that whispers before it screams. By the time the credits roll, you don’t just feel like you’ve watched something brutal — you feel like you’ve survived it, barely, and there’s still something breathing behind you in the dark.
DOLLY isn’t here to play nice. It’s here to drag you kicking and screaming back to the era when slashers didn’t apologize — and it does so with bone-crunching enthusiasm.
MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 82 mins
Director: Rod Blackhurst
Writer: Rod Blackhurst
Cast: Fabianne Therese; Russ Tiller; Michalina Scorzelli
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Mommy Knows Best
Memorable Movie Quote: "Someones art project, maybe?"
Distributor: IFC Films
Official Site: https://www.ifccenter.com/films/dolly/
Release Date: March 6, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: Macy, a young woman, is abducted by a monstrous figure intent on raising her as their own child.
