On The Doll

When adults ask children who have been the victims of sexual abuse where they were touched, they will often ask them to point it out on a doll, which is what the title of this film alludes to. On the Doll desperately attempts to be an edgy and subversive look at sex workers but winds up as a juvenile and glib embarrassment, which seems to exist only to say that kids who are abused become whores with dirty lives. Unfulfilled symbolism, bland characterisations and awkwardly profuse profanity are just some of the flaws that make this film a frustrating and unsatisfying watch. Some of the young actors show some talent despite their indistinguishable, stereotypical characters but are forced to spout atrocious dialogue with no stillness of character or insight to make them stand out. Jaron (Josh Janowicz) proofreads the advertisements for sex workers in a local rag. When he is approached by Balery (Brittany Snow) to run an ad looking for a guy to help her rob a regular trick who doesn’t tip her after she tortures his testicles, Jaron decides to help out himself. He does it to help = a young sex worker named Tara (Angela Sarafyan), who is owned by Jimmy Sours (Paul Ben-Victor) and works in a private booth at Paul’s Used Sex Toy Emporium. Jimmy Sours is also involved in internet porn where a health teacher named Mr. Garrett (Eddie Jemison) brings two of his under-aged students (Candace Accola and Chloe Domont) to do some "modelling.” Meanwhile, aspiring artist/call-girl Chantel (Shanna Collins) gets driven to various tricks by her chain-smoking boyfriend Wes (Clayne Crawford) and inevitably winds up in a sticky situation (no pun intended). The film starts with a seemingly symbolic baby bird that, upon first glance, looks to be struggling to live but in actuality is moving only because of the maggots eating away at its insides. While this could have been an interesting representation of what was to follow in the film, there is really no correlation between this image and the events that proceed it. Aside from some magic bullet mayhem in the third act, little is done to drive home any allusions to characters being dead inside. Any death, symbolic or literal, seems to stem from external stimuli rather than any sort of personal progression or downfall. There isn’t a sense of cohesion with the multiple storylines, aside from the redundant simplification of "gee willickers, doesn’t the world suck?” The DVD includes an alternate ending, extended and deleted scenes, behind the scenes footage, music videos from Otep and Feersum Ennjin, and cast interviews. The extra scenes give little insight to the film, but the cast interviews reveal that the character of Tara was originally supposed to have a Siamese twin attached to her head, which demonstrates the level of maturity involved throughout.