Project Dorothy

This was a movie that I got the chance to see via screener thanks to Justin Cook. Looking at the press release, I saw that this was featured Tim DeZarn and Danielle Harris. I've had a crush on the latter Halloween movies she was in. She is older than I am, but at the time I thought we were the same age. DeZarn is an actor that has a distinct look and fits the roles that he takes on. After confirming that this is horror and a 2024 release, I agreed to watch.

Synopsis: after a botched robbery, two men take refuge in a remote and lifeless scientific facility, inadvertently awakening a monster within.

We start this with images of a factory including a darkened screen that is housed inside of a structure. We also see a woman in a lab coat who we will learn later to be Dr. Jillian (Olivia Scott). She along with others are in a panic due to an alarm and we see her flee with the rest.

This then shifts over to a cornfield. Blake (Adam Budron) and James (DeZarn) head toward a barn that is falling apart. These two committed a robbery. James was shot in the process, so he is limping. They're followed by two police officers, Neilson (George Henry Horton) and Romano (Emily Rafala). The two cops are called off though since the thieves entered a restricted zone.

They enter a large factory that turns out to be the one from the beginning. The only lights that are on would be the security ones. This duo gets cleaned up and look for a place to bed down for the night. There is something eerie going on here. The security cameras are watching them. We see through these that it is assessing the two individuals and watching what they're doing. James tends to his leg, which is worse than what he's letting on. He also finds documents that were being destroyed, but due to those working here fleeing like they did, it wasn't completely.

There was an experiment here with Artificial Intelligence. That was 30 years ago. Despite all that time, Dorothy (voiced by Harris) wakes up. James reading about the project increases the security threat. The true goal is hearing Blake state that he has an item that would allow the computer to connect to the internet. Dorothy is trying to escape and use everything in her power to do so.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start then is that I thought this has an interesting set up and premise. Not necessarily one that is new, but with AI making a resurgence for different things, it does make this poignant. I did get vibes here of things like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator, Ghost in the Machine and Transcendence. There are a plethora of movies using this that you can think back to.

Where I'll start delving deeper is that this feels like a movie effected by the pandemic. We have a cast of six people. One of which is the writer/director. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that Harris did all her voice stuff in a day. Scott and Rafala also probably did all their work in a similar timeframe. This is dominated by DeZarn and Budron as they make it to this building and then trying to survive the night. I'm not saying this as a slight. Due to the abilities of this intelligence, Dorothy traps them. This system also toys with them as it demands the item that Blake has. This isn't a new idea and it's not doing anything too far out of normal. We get the classic anti-hero set up following criminals.

I will say that even though I've seen stories like this in the past, I don't mind the botched robbery set up. James is the veteran here where this is the first job that Blake planned. He got greedy stealing an extra necklace that resulted in James being shot. There is that guilt on both sides. James blaming himself for getting the younger thief involved. Blake feels bad for what happened. I thought both DeZarn and Budron were solid here in bringing their characters to life.

The only other thing for the story is that I love the setting and having this computer trapping them. Harris brings personality to this AI system. It uses forklifts as weapons. I do like that there's a place the thieves find to formulate their plan. Again, nothing new here, but I thought it was entertaining with the story they built.

I've already said that our three leads were solid. I'll say the rest of the acting was fine in their limited roles. That takes me to the other aspect which is filmmaking. I thought the cinematography was good. This is a few setting and it captures that feel. It also feels like a labyrinth was disorienting. It also makes it tough to escape. We don't get a lot in the way of effects here, which I'm glad. The security cameras being the 'eyes' of the system work. Also, the thing that houses the screens to be the 'face' is a good touch. Everything else seemed practical from what I remembered which I'm glad. Other than that, the soundtrack was fine. It doesn't necessarily stand out. I do like the sound design for Dorothy to taught these guys. Harris' work works well for that.

In conclusion, this is a solid low budget, independent film. It uses ideas and concepts that we've seen before. When looking at it like that, it is generic. I still enjoyed my time here. I thought that the three leads, Harris, DeZarn and Budron, played their characters well. This has a good setting and I think the cinematography captures that. The rest of the filmmaking is fine. Sound design is a bright spot there. Won't be for everyone. I'd recommend it if you're into independent cinema as this is a fast watch.

My Rating: 5 out of 10.

I used to trust the score on here when a film had over 1k votes. Well, not anymore. This film has almost 2k votes and this (at the time of writing this) was a high 5 score, which is good for a horror. This however, is not good, not good at all.

This is so poor. Its so low budget, the film goes nowhere, and to say this is a horror is a big stretch. It's a 2 at best, I wasted an hour on this, and hour I won't get back. I presume whoever made the film, had a contact that owned a huge factory that they could use to film in, the factory is the only impressive part of the film. With such a good location, this is a huge waste and they could have done something decent.

This film does a lot with very little. It's not a big-budget CGI-laden flick or all-star cast A24-style production, but you never get the sense it's trying to be. It's rather an exercise in budget minimalism within the action-thriller genre, a class of film where operating with little budget is incredibly challenging. In that, it surpasses all expectations.

The first thing that stands out is the acting, which stands up admirably against any action thriller, but is head and shoulders above performances in other action B movies. As a lover of this genre, I can tell you that the performances in these kinds of movies are often an afterthought, if not altogether scorned by the cast and crew. In Project Dorothy by contrast, the performances between the film's two stars (Tim DeZarn plays an aging criminal mentor to Adam Budron's character, Blake) feel multilayered, yet natural. The film is not a dialogue-first character piece, but it does interweave a good character-to-character subplot below the main brunt of action and suspense, something movies with 10X this film's budget so often fail to do.

The writing also holds up well, with dialogue not feeling forced or over-engineered, and a pacing structure that neither feels too fast nor too slow (another common pitfall of the genre).

Lastly, the directing deserves a lot of praise for, again, doing a lot with very little. Keeping an entire film within the confines of an abandoned warehouse is not an easy task for an easily bored action-thriller viewer base (I count myself among them), but the film at no point feels boring or rushed. There are brief moments of camp or that require a brief suspension of disbelief (why is there no dust in the warehouse, for example), but among the pantheon of sins this genre is known for, these are easily forgiven and forgotten, and all in all, I was having far too much fun to care.

All in all, this film does an impressive with incredibly little. Hats off to the filmmakers for their efficiency and skill in taking what should have been another wooden micro-budget B-movie, and making it a fun, engaging, and at times even heartfelt story.

I would rather watch weekday, daytime TV over this nonsense... like "My 900 pound life" type of daytime TV. See, I'm normally into quirky types of "B" movies, but this is... quite honestly one of the worst 'films' I have seen in a long, long time. To be fair, I have to put a disclaimer that I saw only about half of it. My whole family agreed we'd rather just watch the Stargate Atlantis rerun that was running on SyFy, so we switched off to that, but I gave it at least a good 40 minutes before I gave up. I'm not sure if you can even call it a film, tbh. I am not exaggerating when I say this has the feel of something I've seen my peers create in Movies class in high school in the late 90s. But they didn't even use Window Movie Maker effects. The production value, effects, and acting are way, way below your typical Matlock episode. It literally seems like a couple of 'bros' got together in a bar and got drunk and decided to make a scifi movie for the hell of it. "uhh huh huh huh dude, yeah man, you should totally make a scifi man, and make sure you give the thing like a hot female face, that always works" . Another way you can look at it is if you were playing the original Half Life and just wandering around Mesa without actually doing anything or encountering anything. My spouse joked that it looks like Iowa Farmland, and although initially I took it as a joke, I became fully convinced that's exactly what they did. It seems like they found an old decommissioned or possibly abandoned car manufacturing plant, as well as a abandoned office building from the 90's +/- 10 years, and just filmed the whole thing there. The initial shots showed car painting/manufacturing robots with literally zero post processing done besides like film grain and upping the contrast. They wander around a large cubicle type of office floor which had been cleared completely of all technology. They placed a couple of old computers on like 2 of the cubicles (out of like 50). The AI's "interface" special effect was literally nothing more than left centered Console Font text in green... There seems to be some sort of AI type entity somewhere in the complex, and that red face you see in the movie posters is literally the ONLY shot they have of the thing. It blinks... Opens and closes it's mouth... looks around. This is worse than stock footage, or maybe that's what it is. You see the camera, on multiple and numerous occasions just sneak up on the characters, as if something is coming up behind them, but it's nothing. Ever. Like how many times can you use a stupid plot device like that? I'm sorry, I just can't... I'll stop now...

It's watchable despite essentially being what can only be described as a two-hander episode of a scifi anthology show never seen outside of a place like Canada in the 90s but that somehow influenced Black Mirror in a cursory way.

The premise is slightly believable if you really don't think about it. But the male leads are fun to watch in their bumbling but also oddly tech-savvy criminal ways.

The opening song is really good. It is called "Here to Stay" by a musical entity named Knives at Sea. Not sure it fits over the expository montage that starts the film. A lot of the movie does that. Incongruous pieces jammed together in a clunky narrative.

Still wasn't the worst thing I have ever seen. Oh, and there is corn. If you fear corn, be warned.