An attractive young girl down on her luck is saved from skid row by one of those offers that validate the saying if it looks too good to be true, it is. Certainly most of the time, and absolutely certainly in this case. She is lured out into the middle of nowheresville to housesit and apparently to await the arrival of an elderly man to whom she will presumably act nanny. Except that other people turn up first, including our mystery psychopathic killer, a reincarnation of Leatherface, Michael Myers, or somewhere in between.Needless to say, she is not the first intended victim, at least two girls have been despatched before she arrives, one of them graphically. The psycho in the mask is not the only sicko on the loose, he has actually been brought in to provide the entertainment for the real villain, the type who never gets his own hands dirty.What more do you need to know? Well, the year before this was released, our damsel Natasha Blasick gave an interview in which she claimed to have had sex with a ghost. This one is not so much supernatural sex as necrophilia; its one saving grace is a superior soundtrack, one which deserved to be married to a film worth watching.

Got this film from HMV last week & made plans to watch the film because of how interesting it looked, DVD case & Trailer wise, though I was skeptical & shady about this film due to previous films of the same caliber which had the following things: Short run time, Epic DVD case, little known actors, self scored music, bad pacing, crappy effects & little known film making crew. Though I have seen some good straight-to-DVD films like this, I was still shady about it & didn't expect it to be amazing! The film is about 4 actors starting out in a Reality TV Show & whoever wins gets £1 million in prize money & gets to be the lead role in a Horror Film! That's the basic plot here & doesn't really explain a lot as I'll tell you at the end of this review.This film was decent, not epic, but decent. There were some pretty gory moments! It didn't disappoint in terms of blood & gore! Not to mention the villain was pretty creepy & terrifying! They surrounding scenery of the wooded area was another great visual added in too.But the bad & clichéd things I didn't like was the isolated story, the watery acting, the weak dialogue & the unconvincing story! It seemed all too rushed & quite thin, but what do you expect from a straight-to-DVD film with little to very unknown actors/actresses! But still this film seemed pretty weak & made on the cheap at points!But I'd say the biggest downfall was the ending! Yes, it was a f**king cliff hanger, but wait no the film just ended! Just like that! It wasn't even a damn cliff hanger let alone a decent ending to a film! It didn't even look like a cliff hanger ending it was that random, you were just getting into it & bam! The end! It was such a big cheat as well! I was seriously pi$$ed off! It left me feeling empty & really deprived of what I wanted to know, I mean I've seen some bad endings to films but this...!The ending costed my review a good couple of stars & as a result, I give this film a 3/10, It had gore & violence, but among other things in the clichéd straight-to-DVD films the ending just killed it entirely!

I'm attracted to bad movies, not because I like to trash them, or disrespect them ( although sometimes I have to admit, I do get enjoyment out of that!), it's because I am not always convinced that the movie is really that bad. I think horror movies are very difficult to create in a "good" manner, and by that, I am saying that I feel it is very hard to create a good horror movie, simply because there is so much at stake. One of the added pressures to a horror movie, is that your audience is either eager to be scared, or they want to see some pretty decent gore effects. When both those elements go wrong, along with a weak script and terrible acting, and lots of boring sequences going on, we can safely assume the movie sucks, am I wrong? This is the case with Playing With Dolls. First of all, our viewer is going to be raged at the end of watching this, knowing by the time it is all over, that they were 100 percent mislead by the title and the cover art movie poster. See that scary looking guy on the DVD cover? Guess what? He's not that scary in the movie, simply because he isn't doing anything but a lot of walking. Is walking scary? I walk all the time, it's how I transport myself, did somebody find a way to make it bring chills down the spine? If they did, then the frightening aspects do not exist in Playing With Dolls! And, that's another thing, why was the movie called Playing With Dolls? It should have been called Playing With Cameras, because I saw more cameras then dolls! ( The only doll I saw was the Russian actress, oh, what a doll!) Our movie opens up with a pretty graphic kill right off the bat, within the first five minutes. We see a camera embedded in a tree ( what...the...puck?) We see a man viewing what goes on on the footage of the camera. HEY! It's Richard Tyson, remember this guy!? He was the bully in the 1987 classic Three O'Clock High. Wow! Have you climbed the ranks since then? In this dark, twisted, perverted, mind numbing , dumbfounded joke of a film? Why all this is happening, I don't know. I actually had more questions by the time the credits roll at the end, then when I started watching it. By the way, it's only an hour and twenty minutes, but it will feel like you were watching it for at least 2 hours, trust me. Boring, not entertaining, and if your not going to put some money into the production, why bother making a movie at all? Step up the game, folks, were getting just a bit fed up with the low budget, poorly executed montages you have the gall to call "movies."

This movie right here is without a doubt one of the weakest I have ever seen, and I've seen many!! Believe me when I tell you this: nothing happens!!OK, read carefully and don't you dare to double check me cause that will mean watching it for yourself, so please, please let me do you this one favor and steer you in another direction. At first I couldn't believe how many shots were pretty much for nothing, just to fill some time, but as the movie progressed I discovered that it actually has almost nothing to show. Two kills, not all made by the killer, close to no plot, no gore, little nudity, a good killer mask and a laughable soundtrack. The killer has almost no action whatsoever, which is quite amazing for a horror, the main actor is shown the entire movie, as she eats, dances, sleeps and so on and then when the ending comes, it just comes. A few "action" scenes and the end!Playing with dolls should be named Playing with your nerves! Don't do it. Very weak production!Cheers!