Playing with Dolls (2015)

This is bad in every way. Scooby Doo had more terror and suspense and even when you knew what the ending of Scooby and the game that ending is still better than this. But with as bad as the slasher part was it was not as bad as the tiny cop. We are supposed to believe he chases this serial killer around the globe by himself while wearing his Toys R Us uniform. None of the characters were at all believable as people so they had no shot at making believable characters. The whole thing was like the writer had never seen a horror movie or a cop movie he just had someone explain the concept of them with no details about character development. I wish I could still like movies like this and envy those who do, it would make wasting 2 hours less painful.

Struggling to get by in life, a troubled woman accepts an offer from a mysterious corporation to participate in a strange experiment at a remote cabin-house out in the woods where she gradually comes to learn that a vicious serial killer is stalking her in a vicious game by her employer.This one ended up being quite the decent enough slasher. What really gets this one going nicely is the rather strong action that gives this one a lot to really like overall here. Setting the tone rather nicely by detailing the initial chase through the woods but also getting the fist-fight featured alongside it gives this a nice punch as this gets us acclimated to the type of monitoring system at play here. It doesn't hurt that this also introduces the killer who is an insanely chilling presence that this one gets a lot of mileage out of as the flesh-colored mask wrapped in barbed wire and twisted metal leaves an indelible mark during the middle portion with him stalking her throughout the house against her knowledge. Those are quite creepy as the sight of him behind her moving around in the house without her knowing about it causes this to have a genuine tension that's even more effective due to the flashes of him behind her after just passing by or moving objects to different places in an attempt to confuse and disorient her before going through the phases of a stellar slasher on the other end. From some solid gun-battles to a decent stalking setpiece in the woods where it includes a few extra bodies thrown into the loop for some nice kills and bloodshed, the final half of this one is a lot more enjoyable than expected and gives it some decent moments. As well as the stellar house in the woods where it all takes place which is nicely creepy and atmospheric at times, these hold it up over its minor flaws. What really seems to undo this one is its lack of overall clarity with what's going on. Hardly anything is explained at all here, from what the employer at the computer monitors is trying to accomplish to what the purpose of the killer being freed is supposed to mean and why she's coming up to the cabin in the first place. Just dropping it all on us is not a good way of introducing us to anything, and the questions it leaves us is far more prominent than the ones it answers, leaving the whole affair pretty confusing for the most part. As well, the film doesn't really generate the kind of action-packed pace that's usually required in such films as the majority of time focusing on her wandering around the cabin or detailing the lifestyle struggles she's undergoing don't make for exciting scenes here and just really cause this one to be duller than expected. Since these don't bring about the kind of body count activities usually seen here, the film has some points where it lags considerably from what it could've had and never provides the kind of over-the-top bloodletting or kill-count it could've. Alongside the moments where it's obvious the low budget comes shining through, these are what holds this one back.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Violence and Brief Nudity.

**** May contain strong spoilers ****This is a review made by StoneDraim... and that means that if you want to read a probably different kind of review, keep reading....This is my personal experience, my personal point of view/perspective and my personal opinion... and my opinion is just one of like 7 billions in this world.Quality of the movie filmed in is kind of grey and "gives the impression of a cheap movie". The music opening the movie is all around lousy in the fact that the piece of sound is totally apart from what would be appropriate for the script; a girl runs through the forest with blood on the waist. A serial killer looking a little like Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is going behind her, chasing her, just as in Friday the 13th. A shot shows that the girl is running away and is at least like 40 metres away from the girl. Then suddenly another shot is showing the killer and he's like 20 metre behind her....she is running, he is walking. What!? The synthesizer sounds creating the music and the beat also gives the impression of a cheap and bad production. At the same time as the girl is running, two men are fighting in the woods. Very bad acting and clear missed fighting hits, as I could see after like 10 seconds that they miss each other clearly. The testosterone sign that they are "very cool and very hard" is just so lame directed and overexplicit that the poor actors is shown even worse than they probably are. The blood and the dirt in their faces screams out; "Hey...look...we can use this kind of make-up to save money!". One of the guys look a little like TOm Cruise; I imagine that the trick is to get a actor that looks alike another well known actor to draw audience. When the fighting guys starts to talk....OH MY... OH MY....the terrible acting, the terrible dialogue. They are fighting at a completely different location with green surroundings... the girl is running in snow. The fact can be that there can be snow and green trees close to each other...but... COME ON! How could they hear her scream far away besides when they are fighting? On top of that, one of the guys says that there is a girl being killed right now.... HOW....HOW could he know that? This manuscript is so bad that I seriously started to think about filing a complaint for emotional distress. The lighting shifts from take to take.... sometimes even when the two guys talk to each other... from a moody grey dawn to suddenly bright light into the next second..... really!? I continued watch for like three minutes and could write...oh, let's say 2 pages just about errors, bad sound editing, bad manuscript, illusive small things happening all the time. OK...so this is just like 10 minutes into the movie.... should I ramble on, or am I coming across to you?(I know there were two guys in Sweden writing and filming a short psychological thriller for about 20 years ago, as a master thesis. They were total amateur and their friend played the main character (that was in fact I who played that role). The name of the movie were "Skendöd" (eng.: Apparent dead / Apparently dead) and my point here is; that movie were better and more professional than this one.)Over to the movie as a product: - The production : Do I really need to write more here? - The actors : Do I really need to write more here? - The story : A serial killer chasing for more victims taking the nipples of women. Could have been an almost approved thing going on here....and now.... just leave me alone. - Entertainment : Entertained to compare this "production" to other great productions... seeing and appreciating good quality movies. Interesting as reference to bad movies. Because this is poor. - Age : Just. Forget. It.2,3 out of 10. (The final rate is based most on my own entertainment of the movie. 3 Bad. Weak. Foul. 2 Amateur, small-time, bad... and misconduct.)

I'm attracted to bad movies, not because I like to trash them, or disrespect them ( although sometimes I have to admit, I do get enjoyment out of that!), it's because I am not always convinced that the movie is really that bad. I think horror movies are very difficult to create in a "good" manner, and by that, I am saying that I feel it is very hard to create a good horror movie, simply because there is so much at stake. One of the added pressures to a horror movie, is that your audience is either eager to be scared, or they want to see some pretty decent gore effects. When both those elements go wrong, along with a weak script and terrible acting, and lots of boring sequences going on, we can safely assume the movie sucks, am I wrong? This is the case with Playing With Dolls. First of all, our viewer is going to be raged at the end of watching this, knowing by the time it is all over, that they were 100 percent mislead by the title and the cover art movie poster. See that scary looking guy on the DVD cover? Guess what? He's not that scary in the movie, simply because he isn't doing anything but a lot of walking. Is walking scary? I walk all the time, it's how I transport myself, did somebody find a way to make it bring chills down the spine? If they did, then the frightening aspects do not exist in Playing With Dolls! And, that's another thing, why was the movie called Playing With Dolls? It should have been called Playing With Cameras, because I saw more cameras then dolls! ( The only doll I saw was the Russian actress, oh, what a doll!) Our movie opens up with a pretty graphic kill right off the bat, within the first five minutes. We see a camera embedded in a tree ( what...the...puck?) We see a man viewing what goes on on the footage of the camera. HEY! It's Richard Tyson, remember this guy!? He was the bully in the 1987 classic Three O'Clock High. Wow! Have you climbed the ranks since then? In this dark, twisted, perverted, mind numbing , dumbfounded joke of a film? Why all this is happening, I don't know. I actually had more questions by the time the credits roll at the end, then when I started watching it. By the way, it's only an hour and twenty minutes, but it will feel like you were watching it for at least 2 hours, trust me. Boring, not entertaining, and if your not going to put some money into the production, why bother making a movie at all? Step up the game, folks, were getting just a bit fed up with the low budget, poorly executed montages you have the gall to call "movies."