Review: DOLLY Is Well Worth Playing With

What would you do if you were alone in the remote Tennessee woods and stumbled upon a large, masked person crying in the middle of hundreds of dirty, broken dolls? If you’re Sean William Scott’s character in Dolly, you go right up to that person, tap them on the shoulder, and attempt to communicate with them. And then you get lifted up by the neck, as if you’re a Darth Vader victim, and get hit repeatedly by a shovel. 

Listen, it’s not an actual issue I have with the movie, which just had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025, and is actually a refreshing sort of slasher – I am more than willing to suspend disbelief – but Dolly does bring up an interesting personal point: just how far would I go in this situation? If I woke up in a cradle, wearing doll clothes, and trapped in a decrepit house in the Tennessee back country… would I be able to “play along with it” long enough to set myself free?

That’s the central conceit of Dolly, written and directed by Rod Blackhurst (Blood for Dust, writer of Night Swim): There is an emotionally stunted, supernaturally strong being in the woods who, more than anything, wants to be a mother. The depths they have gone in order to achieve that goal, however, get rather gruesome.

Dolly starts with Sean William Scott’s character Chase dropping his daughter off at her aunt’s house, so that he and his girlfriend Macy (played incredibly well by Fabienne Therese) can go on a romantic long hike together. Chase is ready to propose, and Macy is hyper-aware of that fact. There is an interesting moment of reflection here: is she really ready to be a stepmother? Macy doesn’t have long to ponder because, before Chase gets down on one knee, he goes to investigate what they deem as a “weird art project” (again, I get it, but come on, Stiffler).