Voodoo Dolls

Wow, first review for this film since 2004. Having seen the film, somehow that doesn't surprise me.

Voodoo Dolls is a little-seen Canadian mish-mash of voodoo, ghosts, possession, haunted plays and lesbianism. Now, I know what you're thinking already. That sounds awesome, right? Don't get your hopes up just yet, as even though the film does contain all of those elements, none of them seem to have anything to do with each other.

Trying to decipher the plot of the film can give the viewer a headache of epic proportions. The film begins with a black-and-white flashback of a student of an all-girl school killing the headmaster and two students he was sleeping with, and then moves forward to the present, where Vanessa Forbes is enrolling in that same school. Almost immediately, weird things start to happen to Vanessa; she sees ghostly girls playing with big red bouncy balls, her belongings fall off of her dorm's counters, and people are getting hurt and killed all around her. What could be causing all of these odd happenings? Truth is, I have no idea. There are plot-lines for about seven movies in Voodoo Dolls, none of which are fleshed out and none of which make any sense. It's hinted that the ghosts from the flashback are haunting the school, but there's also some half-assed voodoo sub-plot, in which a black man in face-paint who may or may not work at the school beats on drums and chants while surrounded by vaguely African-looking props. There's also figures that kind of look like Troll dolls that are found in students' rooms and randomly savagely kill a perverted school employee. Oh, and don't forget the "creepy" play that the school is putting on that also might be awakening some sort of spirit. I don't know which one of these is supposed to be causing the strangeness, or if they're all interrelated. Honestly have no clue.

They also squeeze in all of that convoluted nonsense in the last 40 minutes of the movie, after making you watch 45 minutes of what basically amounts to a soap opera. Girls walk around, go on dates, fantasize about the dreamy leader of the school, and participate in PG-13 rated lesbian activities. Plus, these actors and actresses are almost legendarily bad (there's a scene with the black man reprimanding the pervert which may just have the most stilted dialogue reading of all time), the music rarely ever matches up with the scene at hand and is usually strange Southern blues-rock, and the lesbian scenes barely have any nudity. Put all these elements together, and you've got a pretty insufferable half of a movie.

And even after we get to the interesting parts, it's still god-awful. The special effects are about as bad as effects can get; case in point, when a girl slits her wrist, there's no wound or prosthetic at all, there's just some blood-red liquid splattered on her arm. That's how it is for every death in the movie, and it seems as if the entirety of their special effects budget went to buying something that was red and would stay on actors' skin. The final scene's effects literally have to be seen to be believed; they're that bad.

Voodoo Dolls really does nothing at all right, and unfortunately it's not even fun to watch. I know I said two sentences ago that the final scene had to be seen to be believed, but it's not worth it. A couple laughably bad lines (see title of review) and some of the worst acting ever recorded on film provide a few laugh-out-loud moments, but these can't even come close to salvaging this monstrosity. Watching Voodoo Dolls is 90 minutes of your life that you will never get back, and your existence will become worse by watching it. Do like everyone else, and forget this even exists.

Troubled girl Vanessa(Grace Phillips)is sent to The Hanley School For Girls where 30 years earlier the headmaster and two schoolgirls were murdered while having sex.Vanessa joins the drama club and takes the lead in a cursed play.Soon a voodoo curse is unleashed and the voodoo dolls kill drunken pervert...Weak and disappointing Canadian horror film with deadly dull script written by Ed Adlum.There is one laughably poor sequence of titular voodoo dolls attacking drunken peeping tom a la "Attack of the Beast Creatures".The female cast is attractive and there is a bit of nudity,but "Voodoo Dolls" moves at snail's pace.4 voodoo dolls out of 10.Avoid it.

Hmmm....seems I have the honor of being first to comment on this little-seen turkey...

VOODOO DOLLS, an obscure little squirt of supernatural horror bellywash, is sort of a gag gift from our friends in the Great White North(so now we know where that proposed border-wall is REALLY needed). A tour-de-farce of sub-satisfactory dross, it's a wall-to-wall failure even by the lax standards of nanobudget horror schlock. Still, in the right frame of mind(better yet... in an altered state of mind), there are a few moments which are mildly amusing in an entirely ass-backward way...most notably, a riotous scene where a man is savagely blitzed by several pint-sized voodoo dolls which look like a slobbery great dane's best-loved chew toys. Ridiculous and indifferently executed, this scene may lead you to query how the crew ever got it filmed without breaking into a fit of runaway laughter. A garbled narrative involving black magic and a cursed stage play is met with warranted indifference at every juncture of production. The setting is an all-girl boarding-school...there couldn't be a more open-handed and obvious opportunity for gratuitous nay-nays. Why then, pray-tell, is the nudity so skimpy, and the blink of gratis lesbiana so timid that the licking of a postage stamp would have been equally arousing?

Some people, it seems, make movies for a target audience they know very little about...a poorly made film can be forgiven. A poorly made film that makes little attempt to deliver the requisite goods should be a capital crime.

3.5/10.