Playing with Dolls: Havoc (2017)

Directed by Rene Perez [Other horror films: The Dead and the Damned (2011), Demon Hunter (2012), Alien Showdown: The Day the Old West Stood Still (2013), The Snow Queen (2013), The Dead the Damned and the Darkness (2014), The Burning Dead (2015), Playing with Dolls (2015), Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust (2016), Little Red Riding Hood (2016), The Obsidian Curse (2016), From Hell to the Wild West (2017), The Dead and the Damned 3: Ravaged (2018), Cabal (2020), Cry Havoc (2020), Legend of Hawes (2022), The Vampire and the Vigilante (2024)]

I’ve had the misfortune of sitting through both the first and second movies in the Playing with Dolls series. Neither one was something I’d personally call a good time, but I was told that the third is a better film. IMDb ratings back that up – the first has a 2.6/10, the second a 2.5/10, and this one, a 3.7/10. The question then, of course, becomes whether this movie is actually better.

And the answer is: Yes and no.

As far as an engaging story goes, I’d have to admit that they do a better job here. See, a woman and her maid are going up to her husband’s cabin to surprise him, and meet the husband’s mistress; said mistress didn’t even know the guy was married. So because of that emotional material, certainly this portion of the film is at least watchable – some of the acting is just terrible, of course, but the material itself is still entertaining.

On the other hand, absolutely nothing about the horror aspects of the film are better. We still have the killer – apparently called Havoc – who we know next-to-nothing about. He seems to enjoy ripping spines out, as he does that more often. We still have Richard Tyson (in a single scene), who is another character we know next-to-nothing about. I’ll give the movie mild props for changing things up a little – instead of the killer following Tyson’s directives, he breaks out of captivity and hunts on his own. It doesn’t change a damn thing, but at least it’s different?

This movie had pretty much the same problems the previous movies did. Sure, the production value looks nice, and they try insofar as the gore’s concerned, but I can’t describe how disinterested I am in a killer I know nothing about chasing down women and interrupting conversations that I actually find mildly interesting. When I say that the horror aspects of Havoc are the worst parts, I’m not at all lying brahs.

Not that the performances here really bring weight to the aforementioned emotional material. Nicole Stark (Little Red Riding Hood) was generally weak throughout, Wilma Elles little better, and Kyle Clarke largely a non-entity. I did sort of like John Scuderi’s character, but I don’t think he leaves near as much an impact as one would to tilt this film in a positive direction.

As I often say, though, bad performances rarely destroy movies for me. With what these actors and actresses had to work with, I don’t blame them at all for whatever performance they happened to give. You can’t make gold out of toxic sludge; the performances could have been stellar, and it wouldn’t at all have made up for the failures of the plot and dialogue.

I’ll give Havoc one last kudo for the opening of the film. Don’t get me wrong, most of it was absolute shit, the type of thing I’ve come to expect from director Rene Perez. It was, however, filmed in the Lake Shasta Caverns – an underground network of caves in northern California. That was a nice filming location, and though what was actually filmed there was pointless drivel, it did at least look unique.

Is Playing with Dolls: Havoc a better film than it’s predecessors? Sure. There’s some mildly entertaining emotional drama going on, and there’s actually an ending here that didn’t make me want to slit my wrists. Given how much I despised the first few movies, though, that praise can only do so much. So sure, it’s better, but this film is still a long ways from good, and still not a movie I’d recommend even to fans of slashers.

4.5/10