The Dummy

The Dummy (2000) is horrible in every way possible, terrible acting, no gore, no special effects, no story, no excitement, NOTHING AT ALL!!!!

I remember buying this piece of trash a while back, thinking that it looked cool and could be some sort of "Dolls" or "Puppet master", boy was i mistaken, this is AWFUL, surely this effort was "made" by a couple of film students using a very cheap camcorder (which they couldn't even hold properly) in the space of about 2 hours!!!

All remaining copies should be used as toilet paper during your very next visit to the crapper, then banished forever!!! Come on IMDb wheres the 0 out of 10 when you need it??

What a disaster! The Dummy must be one of the worst films I've ever seen, all genres included. There's no suspense, no plot, no class, no idea whatsoever... The acting is very bad, which points to two directions. The cast is either put together of a bunch of amateurs or there's a total lack of direction. The budget obviously makes the first assumption a plausible one - but direction is still awful.

My guess is that they have made up the most of the story as they went, otherwise it is hard to explain all the continuity problems and the whole mess this film is. You really don't start to care about the characters. The film does have a 'script' but this formula has been used so many times that since they add nothing original to it, no surprise twists or anything, the movie is a total bore.

Cinematography is generally very shaky. Sometimes they have tried to use some odd angles but that approach does not deliver. But I'd say it is more the editing, not the cinematography itself that causes it. Lightning is bad, colors are washed out and hardly on purpose. The special effects do not fail, because there aren't any. Which of course is a bad thing in a horror(?) film, even though this film never promises to be one - except in the poster! The ending is a letdown regardless of what way you want to see the movie.

The only interesting thing, as pointed out in other reviews as well, is a longish and completely gratuitous nude scene by the leading actress. It keeps an average (male) viewer interested - but not for long. Also the other risqué scenes of the film are so totally not on a par with this scene that it is even harder to understand the motive to include this one. Though the leading lady has a long list of credits and even some in the U.S. her acting too is terrible at times. On the other hand she's quite easy on the eye, unlike anything else in this movie.

A word of warning: If you are planning to see this, you first seriously need to consider if there could be better ways to spend 90 minutes of your life...

This film certainly has its ups and downs, but I wouldn't go to the extent of saying it's one of the worst films made, especially since it had some really great plot twists along with a good kill here and there. I personally liked it, especially the ending because damn I didn't see that coming, impressive for a direct to video film. Like I said I gave it a watch while st*ned so maybe that's why I got more enjoyment out of the film than I bargained for but who knows, it weren't no scream film but it sure as hell made a nice little indie slasher. I purchased the DVD a few months ago and only decided to properly watch the full feature now, was actually a good film, better than I expected, might cause some controversy me saying this but people's opinions aren't always gonna be the same.

Apparently the DVD transfer was zoomed in too far, cropping off actors heads and short-circuiting visual nuances and award-winning cinematography. In truth, one of the best photographed films of it's budget. Every shot except 2 or 3 are anchored with a tripod, though poor transfers make it appear a bit shaky in places.

The script does assume too much awareness of the subtle implications of the ongoing classic "jekyll-hyde" premise of the ventriloquist being taken over by his dummy, and editing needs to be tightened up. Good example of how script and final editing reflects on actor's talent, giving them too much of the credit or too much of the blame. It has to work on the page or it won't work on the stage.

The poster promises a horror show with blood and violent special effects. In actuality it's a subtle character study of the effects of schizophrenia, and not much violence. Gorehounds will be let down. Beware.

The female lead, Irina Bjorklund, recently won the Academy Award in Finland for Best Actress after many starring roles there in record-breaking major films. This was her first American film. Best seen on VHS, NTSC version available in America.

Low budget horror movie about mentally troubled ventriloquist Paul Chandler (Keith Singleton) and his apparently murderous dummy Tommy. The UK DVD sleeve has some cool looking artwork and the tagline "People say we have a killer act", well I can assure you that this film is certainly not killer. I was hardly expecting another "Dead of Night" (1945) or "Magic" (1978) and the current IMDB rating of 1.8/10 I feel to be pretty fair. This is one of those movies that one person (Singleton) wrote, directs, produces and stars in, I tend to give these credit for trying though the end result is often poor (as is the case here). He has very few credits to his name but did appear in the slasher "Student Bodies" (1981) and is a professional ventriloquist. I guess being the leading man meant that he got to be in the movie's only sex scene, which is quite steamy and may account for its age 18 rating (as opposed to the violence and gore, which is pretty tame). There is a failed attempt to inject some Voodoo/Black Magic into the plot. The acting certainly isn't good but I wouldn't call it terrible either. But was is terrible is the UK DVD, the picture quality is very poor and it is also badly cropped. I ended up watching it in 4:3 ratio, 16:9 looked too stretched but it still sucked. Had it looked better I may have scored it 3/10 instead of 2. My son watched it with me and he laughed at it, at least at 83 minutes in length it didn't feel like too much of an ordeal.