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.
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
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