Loud, Bloody, and Empty: Why Dolly Didn’t Work

 

by Tara Adams
The Creature Beat

Dolly? The mask was creepy. That's about all I liked.

There are some slight spoilers in this, but, I'll be blunt. The movie spoils itself long before the ending.

This likely won’t be a popular take, but the movie didn’t work for me, and it's not because it pushed boundaries. Plenty of horror films do that well. 

My issue is that Dolly seems more interested in shocking the audience than telling a coherent story. The result is a movie that is loud and relentless but hollow once the initial jolt wears off.

The movie centers on a couple who goes for a hike in the woods and is drawn into a violent nightmare connected to a maniac wearing a doll mask.

The biggest problem is how quickly the film abandons its own logic. Plot threads are introduced and then changed or dropped, character decisions shift without explanation, and entire sequences appear to exist only to bridge one extreme moment to the next. 

In this quest to be extreme, there are some parts of the movie that are so silly, but not in a fun way, that make it nearly impossible to suspend disbelief. Just a few examples: 

• Why (or how) is Dolly lactating? Is she pregnant? That's never addressed. The scene seemed to be just a shock tactic aimed at grossing people out.
• Why would people who see dozens upon dozens of creepy dolls all over the woods, some of which are nailed to trees, not recognize there's something very wrong? Not only do they fail to recognize that, but they wander deeper into the woods after seeing it, even splitting up. And then, in an even more bizarre move, Chase tries to comfort the clearly maniacal Dolly when he comes across her sulking amongst the dolls.
• How does a rundown house in the middle of a thick forest with no access road have electricity? And who is paying the bills to keep it on? It's not as though Dolly goes to work everyday. Perhaps, the mother had a job before she died, but we're not given any kind of backstory or character development to even know.

These are just a few examples that don't add up. Perhaps, movies with more cohesive storylines could have gotten away with such holes, but Dolly doesn't share that luxury. 

And did breaking the story into mini-chapters serve a purpose?

Horror doesn’t need airtight realism, but it does need internal rules. Dolly breaks those rules so often that it becomes difficult to stay invested in what’s happening or why.

That lack of investment is made worse by the underdeveloped characters. We’re given just enough backstory to recognize archetypes, but not enough to care when things spiral. 

Horror works best when tension is rooted in people, not just situations. Here, the characters feel like placeholders, shuffled around the screen to set up the next escalation rather than shaped into believable individuals with something to lose.

Dolly can’t decide what kind of story it’s telling. Early on, it flirts with psychological horror, hinting that trauma, guilt, or manipulation might be driving the events. That thread is quickly abandoned in favor of increasingly extreme scenes that contradict what the movie has already established. 

Characters survive injuries that should end them, ignore obvious threats, and make decisions that exist solely to move the plot toward the next kill. It’s not heightened reality as much as it’s narrative convenience.

One of the most frustrating examples comes midway through, when the rules surrounding Dolly herself completely change. The film initially presents her as limited, almost fragile, relying on proximity and circumstance. Later, she suddenly becomes unstoppable, appearing where she shouldn’t be able to and overpowering people without explanation. There’s no logic, just a switch flipped because the script needs higher stakes. Instead of fear, it creates confusion.

Then there’s the violence itself. Gore can be effective when it supports theme, mood, or consequence, such as the ending of The Substance. In Dolly, though, it often feels detached from any larger purpose, deployed simply because the film can. Instead of heightening fear, it becomes numbing, an endurance test rather than a source of dread. 

By the time the credits roll, the excess overshadows whatever ideas the film might have been trying to explore.

I'm not a huge fan of extreme gore for gore's sake, but if I'm going to watch it, at least give me a reason to. 

I understand why Dolly will land with fans who enjoy intense grossness. But for me, horror still needs structure, character, and intention. Without those, all the shock in the world can’t fill the gaps left behind.