Rod Blackhurst’s previous claim to genre fame was creating and developing Night Swim, the short that became the 2024 Universal/Blumhouse feature. That project was a slick studio product, a PG-13 rated ghost story most found a bit soggy (I liked it!). Dolly is the opposite of slick. It’s grimy, handmade, and covered in fake blood, and it asserts itself as uncompromising throwback horror from its opening moments. For the most part, it delivers on that promise.

Macy (Fabianne Therese, Endless Love) and her boyfriend Chase (Seann William Scott, The Wrath of Becky) are out hiking when Chase breaks his own rule and leaves the trail to investigate the eerie sound of music from a toy radio. When he doesn’t come back, Macy goes looking. Instead of Chase, she finds Dolly, a hulking, non-verbal figure wearing a tattered dress and a crude porcelain doll mask, who wants to do one thing: raise Macy as her child. What follows is a nightmarish collision between The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and twisted maternal horror, and Scott’s literal jaw-dropping fate alone will send anyone with a weak constitution running for the exits.

Based on Blackhurst’s 2022 short film Babygirl (the title changed for obvious reasons), Dolly was expanded to feature length, and that seam occasionally shows. The film uses chapter divisions with titles like “Mother,” “Daughter,” and “Home,” sometimes appearing every four minutes. While I typically enjoy chapter structures, this one felt more trite than purposeful, especially coming in such short succession. There are stretches in the middle where the pacing sags, and you can sense the material straining to fill its 82-minute runtime. But when Dolly roars back to life, it really roars.

The film succeeds largely on its two central performances. Therese, once the venomous mean girl of Starry Eyes, delivers a powerhouse turn as Macy, channeling her very best Marilyn Burns as she transforms from victim to determined survivor with convincing intensity. And Max the Impaler, a professional wrestler from the NWA making their screen debut, commands attention as the titular monster. Their performance channels the unpredictability of Leatherface while establishing its own distinct menace, all without a single word of dialogue. The Witchcraft Motion Picture Company team discovered Max online, and it turned out that playing a horror villain was their lifelong dream. It shows.

Shot entirely on Super 16mm in Chattanooga, Tennessee, over just 19 days, Dolly has a richly vintage texture that doesn’t come across as merely recreating a grindhouse experience. Cinematographer Justin Derry and Blackhurst employ tilts, tracking shots, extreme close-ups, and other camera tricks that demonstrate they have done their homework, making numerous nods to other films, though this is singularly its own beast. Production designer Kyra Boselli and set decorator Kaili Corcoran built Dolly’s house interior inside an abandoned perfume factory, and the result is the scariest haunted house you’ve visited made somehow inhabitable.

The practical gore effects, supervised in part by Blackhurst himself, are eye-popping, crossing lines that most films in this lane play by. The CGI moments are noticeably weaker, but the practical work more than compensates. Composer Nick Bohun’s plunky score lends the violence a demented fairy tale quality that fits perfectly. At times, it’s like you are living with a Jack-In-The-Box playing over and over again in your head.

I watched this twice from the safety of my own couch and both times found myself white-knuckling it without realizing. There are genuinely disturbing passages here, and you’d be better served seeing them in a theater with a crowd that is having the same experience. After premiering at Fantastic Fest and Sitges, Dolly has earned its stripes with the genre faithful. It’s gruesome, gutsy, and never boring. Stay through the end credits and listen to the lyrics of the closing song. Then maybe check your locks and call your mom to see if you can do anything to keep her happy.