Directed/co-written/produced by Rod Blackhurst (Night Swim) and starring Fabianne Therese, Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee, Max the Impaler, Dolly unleashes terror in the woods and embraces gritty craftsmanship, practical effects, and a sense of place that bleeds into every frame, as it follows Macy, who is faced with a deranged, monster-like figure.
A nod to the legacy of homemadehorror born in the woods, the movie finds Macy fighting for survival after being abducted by a deranged, monster-like figure who wants to raise her as their child.
A daring blend of New French Extremity and 1970s American horror, the movie is gory, frightening, and a must-watch for fans of the genre.
Last week, we sat down with Blackhurst to discuss bringing Dolly to theaters. The filmmaker talks to us about creating a new horror icon, his wider plans for the franchise, and how he approached the movie's bloodier moments and stomach-churning prosthetics.
You can check out the full interview with Blackhurst in the player below.
I've got to start with Dolly...the mask, the costume. You're adding to this pantheon of iconic horror characters. What was it like coming up with the creation and the design for her in this film?
Dolly was born out of a mix of disparate influences between myself and my writing partner, Brendan Weeble. Tourist Trap, Halloween, Leatherface, Child's Play, Shirley Temple dolls. Actually, I was talking about this earlier, and I said it out loud and forgot to say the rest of it. I knew somebody growing up who had a Shirley Temple doll that was cracked and disfigured like this. You see something like that as a kid, and your imagination runs wild, right? A case in point: I have a four-year-old and a nine-year-old—two little girls. The oldest is in the film, but the four-year-old came home from school yesterday. She knows that Dolly is not real—she knows it's just a mask that's in our basement on a mannequin. She asked us to close her bedroom door last night because there's a poster, and there's one over here. It's red. You can barely see it because it's out of focus, but in her mind, she's going, "That thing might be human, or might come alive." And you're also going, "But it can't because it's inanimate or it's a design." I think Dolly, as a manifestation, is a representation of fears and nightmare fuel that our protagonist doesn't want to have to navigate. You're not going into it thinking, "I'm trying to make something that could one day be iconic." I'm working with something narratively that feels like the right way to have an opposing force to what our protagonist is experiencing and going through. If it becomes iconic, that would be incredible. I would be very grateful.
I'm guessing that casting someone like Max the Impaler and building the character around them must have factored into how Dolly evolved as well.
Well, Dolly is now Max the Impaler. Obviously, Max the Impaler is not Dolly, and Max the Impaler is also a character. I'm sorry, Max, if I'm blowing your cover and you're watching this, but Max is also an incredible person beneath the Max the Impaler persona. We all play parts for different reasons, and some of those roles we play are relative to what we like, see and love. When I approached Max, they said their lifelong dream had been to be a villain in a horror movie, and they were beginning to wonder if they would ever have the chance to realize that dream. They're the heel as a wrestler, which clearly... at that moment, it felt like fate. We had been looking for a gifted physical performer who could do so much without words, but Max elevates it beyond what I could ask for. They're bringing their own lived experience, their own relationship to the genre, their own love of story. They're doing so much more than I can. That's why I'm not Max. That's why I'm not Dolly—because I'm not that person, but Max is. Now Dolly is Max, or they are one and the same for people going forward. Dolly is remarkable in this movie as a character because of Max, and I hope that people go, "Holy—this is hard," and they see it, and they see Max because Max deserves to be seen.
Seann William Scott as well—obviously, he's an actor many people will think of comedies when they think of him. I'd love to know what made him right for this role, particularly as you really put him through the wringer in this one, I think it's fair to say.
What makes Seann right is that he's your friend who you've talked about making many different movies with, and none of them has come together. Your friends show up for you when you beg them to come to the woods and crawl through poison ivy and ticks. I think Sean and I just got along when we first met, and he liked what I was doing or what I was trying to do. We're both dads. I don't know what it is exactly for him, but we certainly underpaid him and Ethan Sley and Fabian—all these people deserve so much more. In time, that will be the case with Dolly and the Dolly franchise for sure. There's that line, "If you have my axe" or "Come ride with me at dawn, and you'll have my axe forever." I think we're at that point as filmmakers and artists where you've built a tribe and you just go forward with that tribe. Sean is many other things other than all the comedic roles he's had to do, and now he gets to be a man who's looking for his face.
You mentioned franchise. Have you given a lot of thought to the kind of mythology that will surround Dolly, whether it be her background or the future? Have you mapped that out, even if it's just yourself for now?
There are all these breadcrumbs in the film. In fact, in 2021, before we ever filmed the proof of concept that was called Baby Girl—because it was originally called Baby Girl—we had written a trilogy. That was always the intention: to scale. When you're making movies on your own with no institutional support, and you have to find all of your own money, you go, "We'll start with the thing we can make." What's more affordable than the woods during the day? Three locations and a couple of actors. You have to start there. But if you don't know what story it is that you're telling and who these people are, you'll get that wrong. It won't ever add up. I also don't know a way to be a filmmaker other than to have this long-term thinking. There is a reason why we're doing everything we're doing. I have hopes and dreams. That's just storytelling 101. We've known from moment one there are all these breadcrumbs—even from the first words that pop up on screen all the way through different characters that reveal themselves, relationships, dynamics that unfold, the way power works in the film, the way the power dichotomy changes at various times, all the way even through what people are saying in the end credits. There's stuff going on in the credits of the film. It's all there, but I can only do so much with the time and money I have. So I do what I can and just go, "Stick with me. There'll be so much more." People have asked endlessly, and a lot of people have detected this, and I say, "Come with me. We will go many places together with Dolly."
I'm a big horror fan and a sucker for gore—the blood and the things that make you wince. There's plenty of that in this film. Did you decide early on that you really wanted to go down that route with this one and make people squeal in their seats?
The violence and the brutality in this film are the result of two characters—two opposing forces—who are trying to navigate a situation where they both want something entirely different. You can understand that that's the response. You have two characters with different experiences, different things that have crafted and shaped them and brought them to this confluence where one is facing motherhood and doesn't want to be, and one who's just lost their mother and has a hole in their heart and is trying to fill it. Everything else that happens after that is relative to those points of view. It is people—or two characters—trying to solve that collision, and it is big and crazy and twisted and weird because that's also what nightmares are. It's the worst possible version of that, and then how do you navigate that? It wasn't "We want to be twisted and messed up for the sake of it." There's true intentionality there.
I can only imagine you must have had such a blast with all those prosthetics you were working with and the blood. It must be like being a kid again.
Yeah, I'm 45. I wanted to make this movie—or a movie like this—for a long time. I should have probably done it years ago, but I'm glad that I did it now. When you first get your first video camera, you're just figuring out how to recreate the movies that you like and the weird things you like, and you're doing it in a really bad way. Now I can do it with incredible collaborators who can do it better than I could ever do on my own. It becomes real. You go, "Holy smokes, we did that. We made that thing happen." Or I didn't make it—in this case, our incredible special effects team, our cinematographer, and our composer did it. It's the best to be able to do things in a tactile way where you can see it, you can feel it, and everybody else can feel it. The behind-the-scenes footage is awesome. When a whole cast and crew watch something happen, they get to react to it. It's not going to just happen later in special effects or in VFX. There you are on set, cheering because it's a release. You go, "Holy, we just did it. I watched it happen." It's the best.
Dolly arrives in theaters on March 6.