Mr. Lundgren - first name unknown - is an unhealthily introvert 30-something fella who works as a night watchman in a mall and lives in a boarding house in the suburbs of Stockholm. Despite many other lively tenants and a clear romantical interest from his landlady, Lundgren is incapable to make social contact and feels incredibly lonely. After a banal robbery at his workplace, he smuggles home a mannequin doll and develops an intense (and very vivid) relationship with it. After a while, Lundgren's neighbors grow increasingly curious about the noises coming from his apartment, but also his own mental state and imagination deteriorate.
Admittedly this sounds like the premise of a trashy and tongue-in-cheek exploitation flick, but in the capable hands of director Arne Mattson ("Mannequin in Red") and thanks to a downright phenomenal performance by Per Oscarsson ("Sult"), "The Doll" became a saddening drama and a complex mental character study.
The script is undeniably influenced by "Psycho", but it certainly isn't a rip-off. Two years after the release of Hitchcock's horror monument, the only real thing that Arne Mattson copies is the mystifying persona of Norman Bates. Like Bates, Lundgren superficially seems like a privileged man. He's handsome, polite, well-dressed, independent, ... But beneath the surface there's a deeply disturbed and potentially dangerous mind in need of help.
Should you search for action or cheap horror thrills, "The Doll" will sorely disappoint you. It's slow-paced (and perhaps a tad bit overlong) but uncannily atmospheric, beautifully filmed, brilliantly acted, and compelling straight from the eerie opening song until the desolate climax.
