Producer/director Charles Band revisits his love of all things dolls with Doll Graveyard, a disappointingly straight-faced horror piece with serious pacing problems.
Guy Fillbrook (Jared Kusnitz) is a high school Freshman who loves all things sci-fi. He especially likes to collect action figures, or as his sister calls them, "dolls." So imagine his excitement when he digs up four antique dolls in his backyard. Too bad for him and his sister Deedee (Gabrielle Lynn), who is having a few friends over while dad is away. For the dolls are possessed by the (angry) spirit of a young girl murdered and buried with her dolls by her malicious father.
Doll Graveyard has the premise and promise of a cheesy but fun b-movie. Too bad writer August White and director Band decided to play everything so straight. As a result, the film is a bore, even at barely over an hour in length once you deduct the opening and closing credits, both of which are hilariously prolonged.
The plot, what little there is, is stretched to its limit as Band fills time countless scenes of the teens partying and/or taunting Guy while sister Deedee makes out with her boyfriend. A half-developed romantic subplot for Guy is even thrown in in the form of one of his sister's friends, who, much to his surprise, likes to collect action figures too. Then this plot is unceremoniously dropped a few minutes later for no apparent reason. When the dolls finally do decide to come to life with about 30 minutes left in the film, their scenes of death and destruction are funny for all the wrong reasons.
For example, a scene in which an eventual victim reaches for a cellphone perched next to a doll she knows is alive because it just tried to attack her yet she puts her hand within inches of the doll anyway. What the hell kind of moron is she? It shouldn't come as a shock that the doll bites her and then attacks her face, biting her cheek. Funny thing about that too is that the blood appears on her cheek before the doll even bites her... The dolls also move so incredibly slow that why the teens aren't able to easily run away from them is something probably best left attributed to their stupidity. Better that than filmmaker laziness.
The less said about the acting, the better. Let it be known though that since this is the first film for most of the cast, they might still move onto bigger and better things, developing their craft along the way. We can only hope because if this ends up as a career highlight for any of them...
I sincerely hope Full Moon's next film, "Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust" is better than this. At least it looks like it could be with a title like that.
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