By Ben Bussey
One simple fact about horror, which any vaguely knowledgeable fan can tell you but which seems so often to be forgotten by the wider audience, is that the genre first and foremost speaks to and for the outsider, the ‘other,’ those who for whatever reason cannot find a place for themselves in mainstream society. Inevitably, this means horror often addresses, be it overtly or implicitly, what we now refer to as LGBT issues. This is certainly the case with Dolly Deadly, the feature debut of writer-director Heidi Moore, which centres on a deeply traumatised, possibly transgender orphan who escapes from his miserable life into a bizarre dreamworld where his homicidal tendencies slowly but surely take form. Yet as grim as that synopsis might sound, this is no dour kitchen sink shocker; nor is it yet more half-baked no-budget DV schlock, even if first appearances might suggest as much. Moore and company present us with a colourful nightmare reality that’s as compelling as it is unsettling, and hand in hand with this give us one of the most satisfying outsider horror movies I’ve seen since Lucky McKee’s May.
Benji (Justin Moore) lives in a trailer park with his grandmother Mitzi (Kimberley West-Carroll), a cosmetics saleswoman, and her boyfriend Donald (Jay Sosnicki), a layabout toy boy using Mitzi as a meal ticket. Neither one of them seems to care much about anything but themselves, and they certainly don’t care about Benji, whose mother died in a bizarre cosmetics-related accident right in front of him when he was just a baby. Given this heritage, and the fact that just about all his mother left behind for her son was her extensive doll collection, it probably isn’t too surprising that Benji has been left with a fixation on those old-fashioned notions of feminine beauty, and regards the dolls his best friends. It’s also hardly surprising that these same proclivities lead to Benji being regarded an even greater hindrance by his unwilling guardians, and bullied by the other children of the neighbourhood. As his misery and torment grows day by day, Benji escapes further into a fantasy world populated by his dead mother and her dolls; and as reality grows ever more cruel, the dolls speak up louder, urging Benji not to take it anymore.
I feel I need to preface the following remark with the disclaimer that it is, in fact, intended as a compliment: in some ways, Dolly Deadly feels like the movie Rob Zombie really wanted to make when he did Halloween. No, his po’ white trash revision of the Michael Myers story didn’t really explore questions of gender identity, but otherwise we have a lot of similar things going on here; a young boy, deeply devoted to his mother, ostracised in his community for being somehow different, the target of abuse both at home and on the streets. However, Heidi Moore has cast even younger with her central psycho killer-in-waiting and a number of his tormenters. This is a pretty bold move, as not only does it make for more grueling viewing to see young kids involved in scenes of cruelty, it also puts huge demands on the child actors involved. I stress this point particularly as Dolly Deadly is a microbudget DIY production; let’s face it, in many such films it’s hard enough to find competent adult actors, let alone kids who are up to the task. Happily, young Justin Moore (son of the director, as is supporting actor Lawrence Moore) is really quite remarkable as Benji, giving a wonderfully natural performance and never at all seeming fazed by the weirdness of the material. He just seems like an ordinary, innocent kid playing make-believe, which on a basic level is really all that Benji is; except the character doesn’t know where the make believe ends. The adult actors, too, prove more than up to the challenges Dolly Deadly sets them; much as it’s asking a lot of very young actors to put them at the centre of such a story, it can also no doubt be rough on the grown-ups who have to be so cruel to the kids on camera. (We can but hope no one in the movie was taking a method approach.)
Still, as well-acted as the movie is, Dolly Deadly is a clear instance of the director being the real star of the show. Heidi Moore does some really striking work here, crafting a visually arresting film which on the one hand evokes the 80s VHS influence which seems so vital in horror today (yep, there’s a lot of green and pink neon lighting going on), but at once boasts a more avant garde, art film feel. Key to this is how the dolls themselves almost become characters in the film; through a combination of suggestive editing and lighting and a few very effective stop-motion animation sequences, the inanimate objects seem to come to life to wonderfully eerie effect.
If I have one complaint of Dolly Deadly, it’s that it perhaps goes on five minutes longer than it really needs to, owing to a prologue scene which feels a little extraneous. There are also a few moments which really betray the film’s ultra-low budget conditions, as well as the necessary precautions taken for the sake of the younger actors; there are some less than convincing gore FX shots, and one brief moment when a child actor is meant to be reading a porno magazine but is clearly thumbing through something more suitable for children. Still, these are very minor issues; goodness knows I’ve seen plenty of DIY indie horrors with a great many worse crimes to their name, and the bulk of them weren’t put together with anything close to the skill and vision we see here.
If you need further evidence of how thin the line between art house and trash cinema can be, look no further. Dolly Deadly definitely rates among the best feature debuts I’ve seen in 2016, and I very much look forward to seeing where Heidi Moore goes from here.
Dolly Deadly is available now in the US on DVD/Blu-ray combo pack and on demand at Vimeo, from Legless Corpse Films.
Dolly Deadly from LeglessCorpse Films on Vimeo.