Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion.
Stuart Gordon's Dolls is a compact, gleefully mean-spirited fairy tale horror that works better as a concept than a fully realized film. The plot has a charming moral logic — wicked adults punished by possessed toys while the innocent child and a childlike adult survive — giving it a Grimm's fable structure that lifts it above standard slasher fare. Acting is broadly sketched at best; the secondary characters are cartoon victims rather than people. Cinematography captures the gothic mansion atmosphere effectively with some inventive puppet-animation work, though the low budget limits ambition. Novelty is decent — the fairy-tale-horror hybrid tone and Stuart Gordon's earnest handling of the material give it personality, though killer doll films existed before. The ending resolves tidily but lacks punch, feeling more like a children's story wrap-up than a satisfying horror conclusion.