When the Dolls Should’ve Stayed in the Box
You know a horror sequel is in trouble when its title sounds like a rejected Chucky spin-off. Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust—written, directed, and presumably regretted by Rene Perez—is the 2016 follow-up to Playing with Dolls, a movie that no one asked for a sequel to, including the dolls.
It’s a film about survival, blood, and people making increasingly bad decisions in the woods. Unfortunately, it’s also about 90 minutes too long for a movie that appears to have been shot using a fog machine, a camping permit, and someone’s old Halloween mask.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if The Hunger Games was produced for the price of a used lawnmower, wonder no more.
The Plot: A Reality Show From Hell (and Basic Cable)
The story—or what passes for one—centers on Stina (Karin Brauns), a single mother struggling to make ends meet. She’s broke, desperate, and one bounced check away from a career on OnlyFans. Then, miracle of miracles, she’s invited to participate in a reality show where the prize is a million dollars and the only rule is “don’t die.”
Naturally, she says yes. Because nothing screams “good idea” like flying to a remote forest to be hunted by a masked lunatic. She’s joined by a cast of walking stereotypes, including Magnus (Colin Bryant), the former soldier who has “tragic backstory” written on his forehead, and a handful of other contestants whose names you won’t remember by the time their body parts hit the ground.
They arrive at the cabin, meet their invisible “producers,” and realize too late that the cameras aren’t for television—they’re for snuff streaming. Somewhere, deep in a bunker full of dollar-store monitors, a man known only as The Watcher(Richard Tyson) observes the carnage with all the enthusiasm of a DMV clerk on Ambien.
Meet the Killer: The Only One Doing His Job
Our slasher for the evening is Prisoner AYO-886—a towering, mute, masked brute who murders people with the grace and subtlety of a sledgehammer. Literally. He kills people with a sledgehammer. A lot. It’s his defining character trait.
He’s big, he’s silent, and he’s covered in enough fake blood to make a butcher cry. But even he seems tired. You can practically hear him sigh between kills, like, “I went to murder school for this?”
At one point, he slowly saws a woman’s arm off with a rusted hacksaw, which would be horrifying if it weren’t filmed like a how-to video for medieval home improvement. The gore is gratuitous but somehow still dull—like a bad magic trick where you can see the wires and the magician yawns halfway through.
The Watcher: Peeping Tom Meets Sleep Paralysis
Richard Tyson, a man who’s appeared in both Kindergarten Cop and your nightmares, plays The Watcher, a voyeuristic puppet master running this blood-soaked reality show. He spends the movie sitting in a bunker surrounded by screens, watching people die while occasionally mumbling to himself.
He’s supposed to be terrifying—a symbol of detached evil and voyeur culture—but mostly he looks like a guy waiting for his pizza delivery. You half expect him to lean back, crack open a beer, and complain about the Wi-Fi.
If the film had leaned into the absurdity of his character, maybe it could’ve been fun. Instead, he’s just there—like a boss who shows up to meetings but never contributes.
The Dialogue: Written by a Blender
Every time someone in Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust opens their mouth, you can feel the script screaming for mercy. The dialogue oscillates between wooden exposition and unintentional comedy.
Characters say things like, “We have to survive!” and “This isn’t part of the show!”—which, thank you, Captain Obvious. One character, after witnessing a decapitation, manages to utter, “This can’t be happening!” in a tone usually reserved for realizing you’ve double-booked your dentist appointment.
The attempts at emotional depth are worse. Magnus has a son, Stina has a daughter, and both seem contractually obligated to remind the audience of it every ten minutes. “I have to live… for my kid!” they cry, as if this will make the next scene of brain-bashing somehow meaningful. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
The Acting: Victims of Circumstance (and Budget)
Karin Brauns, as Stina, does her best with the material, but it’s like watching someone try to recite Shakespeare while trapped in quicksand. She screams convincingly, runs through the woods believably, and maintains mascara continuity better than most professional makeup artists.
Colin Bryant’s Magnus brings some charm to the chaos, at least until the script demands he fight the killer using pure testosterone and regret. Richard Tyson delivers his lines with the intensity of a man who has fully accepted his paycheck. The rest of the cast exists mostly to pad the kill count and prove that fake blood is cheaper than character development.
Jennette McCurdy wasn’t in this movie—but after watching it, you’ll wish she had been, just for morale.
Cinematography: A Forest and a Dream (Mostly a Forest)
If you’ve ever gone camping and filmed your trip on a GoPro, congratulations—you’ve already made a better-looking movie than this. The camera work alternates between shaky handheld shots and weird, static angles that make you wonder if the cinematographer fell asleep mid-take.
Half the movie takes place in pitch-black woods, where you can’t tell whether you’re looking at a tree, a victim, or a misplaced crew member. The other half happens in The Watcher’s bunker, which looks suspiciously like someone’s basement rec room circa 1998.
There are moments when the lighting is so dim you might think your TV broke. It didn’t. That’s just the film’s aesthetic—”low visibility horror,” also known as “we couldn’t afford proper lights.”
The Gore: Gratuitous but Cheap
Perez clearly loves gore. He splashes it everywhere like a toddler with finger paints. Limbs fly, skulls crack, blood spurts in improbable fountains—and yet, somehow, it all feels… fake.
The kills are designed to shock, but without proper buildup or emotional stakes, they just feel like gory intermissions. You’ll find yourself checking your watch between murders, wondering if the killer has a union-mandated break.
If the movie were any more repetitive, it would qualify as performance art.
The Ending: Black Screen, Merciful Silence
The climax pits Magnus against AYO-886 in a final showdown that could’ve been epic—if it weren’t filmed like two men wrestling for the last granola bar. Then the screen fades to black, leaving the audience with no resolution, no catharsis, and no will to live.
Meanwhile, The Watcher just sits there, watching. He doesn’t smile, he doesn’t gloat—he just continues his eternal punishment of being in Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust.
Same, buddy. Same.
Final Thoughts: A Toy Story Without the Fun
Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust wants to be a gritty meta-slasher about voyeurism and survival. What it delivers is a collection of low-budget kills and long, awkward pauses where plot should be. It’s as if someone tried to remake Saw with $12 and a Groupon for fake blood.
There’s a fine line between artful exploitation and pure incompetence—and this film pole-vaults right over it, landing in a puddle of corn syrup and bad dialogue.
By the end, you’ll wish you were the one in the cage—at least then, you wouldn’t have to finish watching.
Verdict:
⭐️½ out of 5.
It’s not so much a movie as it is a tax write-off with body parts. If you enjoy incoherent slashers, by all means—press play. Everyone else, take my advice: don’t play with dolls, and definitely don’t play with this one.
