Dangerous Worry Dolls

First off, let me tell you that I can not compare this to earlier works of Mr. Brand, because I do not have them clearly in mind right now (and I haven't seen all his movies either). What I can say though, is that this movie is pretty decent. Especially if you consider the title and it's theme/story.

It's not breakout great or anything but it is entertaining enough for a small budget movie. The actors are decent considering the material and the movie does not deteriorate into complete camp and absurdity (which you might find to be a bad thing, I guess). Low budget horror and nice effects (though most is off camera) works in favor of this movie.

After a troubled youth, a woman enters a woman's prison and is soon to be paroled and reunited with her daughter. But a gift from her daughter, some worry dolls, have decided to solve her problems for her with extreme violence. Early parole? Probably not.

As far as films from Charles Band go, this one is actually good. Like, really, truly good. Except for one thing... the dangerous worry dolls. That's right, we have a really tight script thanks to Full Moon regular August White, solid directing and respectable acting... with a dark and interesting plot about prison and the evils therein. The dolls weren't even necessary. The cheesy graphics take away from it.

There's a subplot involving rape and a camera... which is quite a sinister idea. I have to give the writer credit, as this was a plausible idea and one I do not think I've encountered before. It was just, well, evil. Something you don't often encounter in horror anymore, and certainly not from Full Moon, who have devoted their time to more humor than anything. So, while this one falls short, it doesn't fall as hard as some have.

As another reviewer has suggested, it's not worth wasting too much time telling you "this movie sucks". What do you need to know? Cheap, unconvincing sets. Perfunctory acting. Barely coherent plot full of red herrings and non sequiturs. Doesn't last a minute longer than the minimum they can get away with.

This is what? A women's prison? And they have not cells, but dormitories? Through which the male warders stroll while the girls lounge on their beds in their underwear? Even the notoriously cheap Australian soap, Prisoner Cell Block H, had a go at cells, even if the cardboard walls did wobble when people bumped into them.

But what's the point complaining? It's a Charles Band film. That tells you everything you need to know.

Almost everything, but there are still a couple of points worth making. It may be bad, like all Band Full Moon productions, but it's still nowhere near as mind-sappingly awful as something from The Asylum Team. I'm not sure why, but I think it may be because there still survives a sense that someone is trying to entertain you by telling a story, whereas in Asylum mockbusters the cynical and exploitative contempt for the audience has long overshadowed any vestigial vision or artistic purpose.

And there's at least one good scene in it. Well, not good, necessarily, but promising. Eva (Jessica Morris, who, fair dos, actually has a creditable go at making something of her part) is being disciplined by the sadistic (natch) warden/matron (Deb Snyder). So as not to leave any incriminating evidence, the warden produces an old electric shock machine, a wonderfully hokey piece of equipment seemingly stolen from the laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein, full of unnecessary coils and valves. As the warden administers increasingly violent shocks, Eva first laughs ("ooh! - that tickles") then shouts out her defiance and contempt ("you're going to have to do better than that!"). There's a genuine, exhilarating demonic power to all this. If only the scene was properly resolved, instead of cutting away and then returning later to a tableau of the aftermath.

And that's what's so frustrating about cheap films like this. With just a little bit of effort, a little bit of care and attention to detail, that spark of creativity could have been fanned into something worthwhile. Not great, necessarily, but challenging, provocative, or even bitterly funny. At the end of the day, it's not the cheap sets or Ed Wood special effects or amateur acting that does for films like this. They actually don't matter; you only notice them because for so much of the time there's nothing else to notice. No, what does for these films is the laziness, the negligence, the numbing lack of ambition. It's the script and plot that lets them down, and they cost next to nothing. Just spend a bit of time thinking through those plot strands, and find a resolution that ties them together. Dialogue rusty? Get a second pair of ears to work through it. Concentrate on a couple of key sequences (in this film, that'll be the electric shock machine, and the waste disposal unit) and take a bit of time and care getting them right.

But that's the film that might have been. This one, I'm afraid, is not worth wasting your time or money on. Well, probably not. I got my copy from a pound shop. That's a British recession-driven thrift store: everything a pound or less (about a dollar fifty). At that price, I'm not really angry. It gave me a wry smile or two, and added to my knowledge and understanding of Z-grade horror films. But don't pay a penny more.

Having trouble in prison, a woman who has problems dealing with the other inmates finds that her daughters' gifted worry dolls are able to help by possessing her and letting her carry out her desired plans for revenge against them forcing them to find a way to stop her rampage.

This here is a decent enough if slightly-flawed effort. Among the more enjoyable features here is the rather unique concept this brings about in getting the dolls into the film's main story which is somewhat new and creative. There's been very little out there with the actual doll concept used here, which makes for a rather unique idea running wild throughout here which lets this play out quite nicely in the high- end action scenes on display. Though being based on a possessed slasher-style of a story here, there's a big difference in the way this is connected to the idea of the dolls behind it driving her from the inside, as not only do we get the scene of them visually entering her but also managing to let the scenes of her running wild against her tormentors with the brawl in the showers, the scenes of her standing up to the problem inmates who have been threatening her and her friends that makes for quite a large portion of this one as well as letting the rest of her personal vengeance get played out as it drives this one here. With her enhanced abilities and the possession driving her into doing other more ruthless and damaging behavior towards them this one really picks up the pace and makes for quite a fun time with the different methods of torture devised here to get back at them, and given all this with the kind of typically great effects work found in these works it's got some really good parts to be found here. Still, there's quite a few flaws present in such a film. One of the biggest ones here is the fact that there's just so many typical clichés found in the film which are found here as the prison here is basically just like any other with the brutal inmates running wild against the others, the cruel warden who lets the guards rape, abuse and mistreat everyone they feel like and turns this into such an overly predictable manner of prison-bound offering. This one also manages to be quite obvious in it's low-budget nature here at times, really wanting to be bigger or grander but forcing the effects work of the dolls poking through her forehead or the laughably inept holding room for the inmates which is simply just a bunch of cots strewn around an open room which really tends to cause some issues here in their standing in the prison but also the rather obvious low-budget nature of what's happening. Likewise, the fact that they're unable to tell what's happening to here is a little hard to take in, really being quite obvious as well about her condition and not doing anything about it is a little hard to believe. These here are the film's biggest issues.

Rated R: Extreme Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Brief Nudity, a Rape and drug use.

This is a pretty scary movie. It has great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. I do not know why it got a 4.3 that is just underrating it. I give this movie a 6 out of 10. This is scarier then The silence of the lambs could ever be. This is scarier then the 2010 remake of A nightmare on elm street could ever be. This is scarier then the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th could ever be. This is scarier the Halloween resurrection could ever be. This a very good revenge story. If you like horror stories you should see this movie. This is one of the scariest movie I have seen. If it does not scary you no movie will.