Movie Review - The Dollmaker

Argentina I 2025 I Horror, Thriller I 97 minutes

 Dripping with Lynchian style, The Dollmaker (Encantador; Argentina, 2025) is part charming, funny, decidedly weird and enjoyably bloody. Things are not all they seem to be in a cheerfully idyllic town that soon becomes a hotbed of female kidnappings. No one seems to care much about the missing women, including nerdy video store clerk and amateur dollmaker Tomás (Rodrigo Noya.) But when a new inspector comes to town determined to solve the disappearances, Tomás soon becomes the unlikely prime suspect. A horror film that becomes increasingly dark, gruesome, and unpredictable.

Available on VOD August 25

I was invited to watch a screener of The Dollmaker.

This is one of those what in the hell did I just watch kind of movies. The town is described as "cheerfully idyllic" but to me it was just plain bizarre. The "Diner" that serves hamburgers and typical American fare also seems to serve as the local dive bar, the video store is manned by workers dressed as boy scouts who tell you to always be prepared; there are counseling sessions in a multi-purpose building, and the police force is odd. 

The description on IMDB says "In a quiet village, a charming young man named Tomás leads a simple life: caring for his mother, working at the video store and town clinic, and collecting dolls. As women start disappearing, newly arrived Inspector Porter investigates." But I disagree. Tomás was not charming. He was not the kind of person that people would claim to be shocked if they found out he was a killer. He was gawky and awkward, your basic loner lacking social skills. To me, he seemed to be Argentina's version of Norman Bates. I'm not sure who was crazier, Tomás or his love interest who found him "charming."

Can anyone stop him before he adds to his doll collection? Does anyone not notice how weird he is? Is someone keeping his secrets for him? I guess you'll have to watch to find out, if you are in the mood for a surreal, slightly gory, trippy, gross-out horror.

Directed by: José María Cicala

Written by: José María Cicala, Griselda Sanchez

I rated this a 7 out of 10 on IMDB

View the trailer 

Produced by: Abril Cicala

Cinematography by: Martin Nico

Edited by: Cecilia Calarota

Music by: Nahuel Maeso

Starring: Rodrigo Noya, Griselda Sanchez, Lejo Garcia Pintos, Alejandro Baldoni, Santiago Domongues, Eduardo Calvo, Guillermo Zapata, Silvia Petri, Mario Alarcon, Arturo Puig

Nightmare Abbey 10 edited by Tom English

10th mammoth volume of the critically-acclaimed horror magazine/book.

Creepy GHOST STORIES & other WEIRD TALES!

FEAR IN FOUR COLORS (History of American Horror Comics, part 7)

12 terrifying tales by today's top writers!

New HORROR DELVE list: 13 Greatest pre-WWI horror tales

Another chilling visit to Bone Street!

Classic horror movie: Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE

A new Magnus Supernatural Dog Tale

INDY (the Horror Husky) TAKES OVER!

Art by World Fantasy Award-winner Allen Koszowski

Heavily illustrated: movie stills, comic book covers, cool facts!

Get it now, fellow fiends!

This was my tenth visit to Nightmare Abbey, and as always I enjoyed my stay. This volume felt a little more atmospheric and darker than before. I say that with appreciation, not with disappointment.

 From the first tale, The Grinning Woman by Michael Kelly about a young man who was tormented by night terrors as a child, worsened by the stories his father told him, to the last story, Pardon Our Dust by Steve Rasnic Tem, about a mostly absentee father seeing his daughter off to college with a quick stopover in a hotel that is under endless construction. There was such a heavy, pervasive feeling of danger lurking in this gloomy hotel that is somehow staying run down even while it is being built up.

Other favorites were Mam Gu by Stephen Volk, The Revenant's House by Sean Hogan, and The Bane of Colmonell by Helen Grant.

Heavily illustrated and including glorious still shots from classic horror movies you may have missed out on, Nightmare Abbey continues to be both entertaining and informative. I loved the inclusion of a list of the top 13 Greatest pre-WWI horror tales, some of which I've read and others that I'm now excited to search for.

My thanks to Dead Letter Press for the finished copy.

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Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror by Alex Grass

 

"Neither his face nor his lips moved when he laughed. It was more a plague of laughter than the sound of it; a pervasion of the hearer's mind by hypnotic disease."

A boy discovers his father's oracular grotesque in a secret dungeon below their family funeral home.

An antique spiked collar transforms Philadelphia into a city that worships a dead dog.

A video game dominates the market for years and then disappears, except for one man's memories of its horrors.

A mother with a trunkful of hungry, inhuman babies tracks down the family that abandoned them.

The warden of a penal colony offers to pardon a murderer, but only if the inmate can find the antidote to the poison wine the warden gave him.

A wealthy young woman receives a surgical implant that delivers more than just a shapely body.

Step into a world of fleshly titillation and fresh terror, a dimension of blood and consequence. But buyer beware! Crack the spine and these dark tales are not so easily forgotten. And you may find yourself changing into a beast of insatiable hunger, a tormented sinner, a lunatic on the fringe.

Heed this warning, that what once is read cannot be unread. Turn back now, if you can, or else become one of the... Infernal Tramps!

In all honesty, I am not the target audience for these type of stories. While I do love short horror fiction, I need a definitive beginning, middle, and ending. Most of these stories had abrupt and ambiguous endings instead of satisfying conclusions. The writing style was more distracting than engaging.

As short as these stories are, there were still a few that I skimmed because they did not grab my interest within the first few pages, and for me that is something important to accomplish when you aren't writing a novel. If the story is going to end in four pages it needs to grab my interest within the first two. A few seemed more like ideas for a story than a completed effort. 

I did enjoy the satirical look at technology and excessive plastic surgery in The EP™ Implant. Likewise, I was thoroughly creeped out by "Odd Egg" which is what a woman finds herself in possession of after she comes home to find a strange man on her porch offering her a free carton of eggs.

You may enjoy more of the stories than I did, but the majority of them were not for me.

I received an advance copy to review.

More books by this author

The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen

 

In 1964, four remarkable young women at a prestigious university became the subjects of parapsychology experiments by a visionary scientist. On the cusp of a historic breakthrough, the women mysteriously vanished and the program was erased from history. Decades later, Riley Bell, newly divorced and desperate for a fresh start, accepts a caretaker job for an elderly widow named Betty. Riley steps into a home that is frozen in another era - no microwave, television, or cell phones, and Betty has never heard of the internet. 

Why has Betty lived in such profound isolation for so many years, and why does she need Riley now? As the story unfolds across two timelines - Betty’s 1960s era of 5 o’clock martinis and high-stakes experiments, and Riley’s quest to uncover the truth about the missing women - old secrets rise to the surface. And the only way to survive is to confront the mystery that has lingered for sixty years.

Told on two timelines, the present day and 1964, when women aspired to be Betty Crocker, (is that why a main character is named Betty?)  this is the story of four young women who endured psychological torture under the guise of parapsychology experiments at a prestigious university.

In the present day, Riley is homeless and penniless, living in her car until she is offered the position of live in caretaker of one of these women, now elderly and in a wheelchair from a terrible accident. Betty wants Riley to help her reconnect with her former friends.

I love a good historical fiction mystery, and I enjoyed the first half of this book a great deal. Betty's point of view from 1964 was especially compelling, as was learning what her friends went through as the experiments became more and more grueling. It was heartbreaking and tragic to find out what happened the day these friends separated. Three of these four ladies were married, but of course all three husbands were too cowardly to stand up for their wives until one finally did when it was too late.

 I was less interested in Riley and her marital discord. The eventual reveal of who has resurrected these experiments and the reasoning behind it left me wanting a better explanation. All in all, an enjoyable read even if parts of it bothered me.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for the e-ARC.

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