Doll House Review: An Indie Horror With Potential
A care home for child runaways takes in an 11-year-old girl, her only belongings are a Doll and mysterious Doll House. She refuses to speak and won’t ever let go of her doll.
The other children tease her. People start to disappear and seem to appear as tiny dolls inside the dollhouse.
An evil entity haunts the doll and dollhouse and is collecting the souls of the children for its ultimate cause, to be alive.
Whilst this movie is far from perfect it certainly improves on many issues that have plagued Greenway Entertainment films and their budget restrictions for many years.
The sound quality is much improved and the cinematography has improved massively.
The acting quality and overall feel of the movie is much more well rounded and polished.
Don’t get me wrong, this is far from a perfect movie but filmmakers learn as they go on.
With every film comes a new opportunity to learn and improve and you can see the progression of quality with every feature film released by Steven M Smith and the team.
Toyah Wilcox as Layla – Photo Credit Gaz De Vere
Starring Toyah Willcox, Mark Wingett, and Paul Danan Doll House delivers some creepy scenes (much later in the movie) and believable acting.
After a very sluggish opening things start to heat up momentarily as a psychic becomes possessed by the devil. As a result, she sends a community centre into a frenzy as they flee for their lives.
I was laughing more than I was scared but it was still a cool little scene to witness. After this, the film calms down again and simmers to a snail’s pace.
You need to be a very patient person to get through Doll House. There’s little happening on screen to keep you hooked for the opening 50 minutes (the film is 85 mins long).
In time the movie finally improves and the pacing picks up slightly towards the end. The rather dragging first and second acts could have easily been cut down.
Dragging out scenes for suspense only works when a great musical score is introduced.
Doll House certainly doesn’t have one of those so it does drag on somewhat considerably.
Overall
The scenes where the dollhouse replicates its victims’ last moves before they meet their demise is a nice touch. Doll House is one of the better-looking micro-budget films I’ve seen.
Unfortunately, it just doesn’t feel like it should be a feature at all.
This indie horror has potential. If the film was cut down and tension amped this could have been one hell of a superb horror anthology episode.
Sadly, as a feature film. It doesn’t quite work.
Doll House review by Sean Evans
Doll House will be released through 101 Films on 23rd March 2019 on DVD and digital download from Rellik Films, Greenway Entertainment and Champdog Films.
All photos in this article are (C) of Gaz De Vere
Doll House
Summary
Whilst the premise is incredible and the movie is much improved from an aesthetic standpoint it sadly drags on and wears a little thin.
The film does however have potential to be an incredible short film!
