3 July 2016

WORRY DOLLS. (2016) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.




WORRY DOLLS. (2016) DIRECTED BY PADRAIG REYNOLDS. WRITTEN BY DANNY KOLKER AND CHRISTOPHER WIEHL. STARRING CHRISTOPHER WIEHL, KYM JACKSON, TINA LIFFORD, SAMANTHA SMITH, KENNEDY BRICE AND YOHANCE MYLES. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I love the idea of worry dolls. The nice normal kind, that is, not the nasty voodoo-type ones from this film, haha. The idea is that you give these little homemade dollies to a child and encourage the child to tell its worries to the doll. The doll takes the worries into itself, thus liberating the rugrat and leaving it worry-free. See? Easy-peasy. What a charming idea!

I quite fancy a bit of that myself. Mind you, by the time I'd loaded the dolly up with my moans about my bills, my kids, my aches and pains, my ramshackle house and how hard it is to find a man when you have bills, kids, aches and pains and a ramshackle house, the doll would probably have exploded. Or at the very least grown legs and crawled off in protest. Some worries we're just not meant to offload onto a piece of cloth and twig with a moptop of wool for hair...!

We actually tried the 'worry doll' idea in our house once, only we used a little box into which the kids were supposed to put pieces of paper with their worries written on them. We abandoned the whole idea when my son wrote: 'The lady in the corner of the bathroom gives me the creeps' on his square of paper. I have enough earthly problems. As Sherlock Holmes once said: 'No ghosts need apply...!'

Anyway, back to the film. I watched Padraig Reynolds's other film, RITES OF SPRING, and I absolutely loved it. I won't give away any spoilers here, I'll just review it another time for you. By the way, with a name like Padraig Reynolds, he's just got to be Irish.

No other country in the world ruins the perfectly good name name of Patrick by turning it into the hideous Padraig. No offence to guys called Padraig. I've just always hated that version of Patrick, haha. Like our girls' names Siobhan, Saoirse, Ailbhe and Roisin, no-one outside of Ireland can either spell or pronounce it correctly...!

I loved WORRY DOLLS. Methinks someone has a fetish for tying up scantily-clad females, gagging 'em and suspending 'em from hooks, heh-heh-heh. At least on camera, anyway. The first few minutes of the film are pure horror, as a blood-stained, terrified woman attempts to escape a drill-wielding serial killer. A great start for any horror film, as I think you'll agree.

The chase takes them down the corridors of an old abandoned hospital and, even when a cop fortuitously comes to the aid of the woman, the horror doesn't stop there. It simply accelerates. These really are some excellent scenes and I enjoyed them immensely. Kudos to you, Padraig...!

Here's where the titular worry dolls come in. The serial killer leaves behind a box of these cute wee dollies. The downside of this is that the dolls are infected, infested, even cursed with all the horrors and nightmares the troubled murderer confided in them when he was a nipper.

The dolls accidentally end up in the hands of various townspeople instead of in the police evidence locker. You'd think it was the bumbling Chief Clancy Wiggum from THE SIMPSONS who was heading up the case and not the manly and extremely attractive Matt Williams, wouldn't you?

When Officer Matt realises that everyone who now owns a worry doll is becoming possessed by the warped and twisted soul of the dead serial killer, it's his job to round up the dollies and try to prevent their new owners from stabbing their nearest and dearest.

When Matt finds out that his own eight-year-old epileptic daughter Chloe is one of the proud owners of the murderous dolls, a race against time ensues to save the ill little girl from the influences of the doll and its former owner, Henry Leonard Bale.

You know he's a serial killer because he's got three names, haha. Like John Wayne Gacy and Henry Lee Lucas. Henry seems to be a popular name amongst serial killers. I've never known a Henry in my whole life but, if I did, you can be sure I'd be keeping a very close eye on him in case
he tried any of his serial killer stuff on me. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him and that's a fact.

I loved WORRY DOLLS. The pace is fast and the murders are great. The blood literally flows as the victims bite the dust. I still don't know how the film-makers make it look as if someone's throat is being cut from ear to ear. How do they do that? I know there's obviously a trick to it but for the life of me I can't work out what it is. I guess that's just the magic of film.

I loved the Old Voodoo Lady's shack in the woods and I was outraged that no-one discovered what happened to Big Al. Is he being discriminated against just because he's a lowly gardener? I certainly hope not.

Lowly gardeners are people too, you know, as you'd know if you'd read my recent bestselling book, LOWLY GARDENERS ARE PEOPLE TOO, in which I attempt to raise awareness of their plight. It may not win a Nobel Prize for Literature, but it's doing pretty well amongst- you guessed it- lowly gardeners.

Overall, this is a great horror flick and I can't wait to see what the director does next. Presumably something that involves semi-nekkid women hanging from hooks out in the old barn. Padraig, you naughty pervert, you...! Good luck with your next film. I'll be waiting patiently, with my reviewer's hat firmly in place.

The film is currently out on Home Entertainment release thanks to the joint efforts of JINGA FILMS and STUDIOCANAL UK. In my ever-so-humble opinion, it's well worth a look.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

 You can contact Sandra at:


http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com







No comments:

Post a Comment