Down on her luck Sarah (Hailley Laurén) has returned to her hometown to take possession of the decrepit family home left behind by her deceased mother. Meanwhile, her nosy, unstable neighbor Sandy (Kelsey Pribilski) is insistent that Sarah continue her mother’s holiday traditions, or else. So begins a psychotic duel between two women each dealing with their own pain in very different in director John Valley’s American Dollhouse.
When Sarah arrives to meet her brother, Michael (Tinus Seaux), at the above-mentioned ramshackle abode in East Austin, he thinks that the best thing for the family is to sell it off and let some developer tear it down so they can walk away with a little bit of cash instead of a giant headache. Sarah, on the other hand, needs a soft place to land after a series of misadventures that have left her in a bit of a tough spot. She winds up moving in so save some money and maybe slowly do some work to make the place livable.
Sandy, who lives across the street, almost immediately accosts Sarah to make sure that she plans to strung up her mother’s Christmas lights to keep up the spirit of the season that she’s always counted on. There’s something not right about Sandy. She looks disheveled, striding everywhere in an oversized pink sweatsuit, and appears to be perpetually on-the-verge-of or in-the-middle-of a nervous breakdown, and that puts Sarah appropriately at unease.
It soon becomes clear that Sandy’s request was not optional as her neighbor turns from insistent into a full-on stalker, peering unabashedly through her windows at all hours and never allowing Sarah a moment’s peace. In an attempt to normalize her new life, Sarah attempts to build a support system from friends both old and new. Landscaper/pizza guy, Rick (Richard C. Jones), proves to be a potential new suitor, and bestie Avery (Danielle Evon Ploeger) soon arrives to try and normalize a situation that has gotten increasingly tense. Sandy doesn’t like this. Things get violent.
There is no dearth of weird neighbor movies in the world, but American Dollhouse takes a stab at mixing influences that have not typically been used to tell this type of horror story. A little bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a little bit The ‘Burbs, and a little bit Psycho, the movie pits two women with mommy issues against one another in a battle that can only end in bloodshed.
While the film presents as pretty straightforward, there is an undercurrent of the instability of the modern world that can’t help seeping through. However, the film’s main thrust is just to make you feel uncomfortable and to thrill with a series of well-executed, creative kills that send Sarah reeling. Laurén’s performance in the lead is that of a woman who is being drawn closer and closer to the madness that has consumed her neighbor. As she more and more of her world gets ripped away from her by Sandy, she has no choice but to fight feral with feral, which leads to a third act twist where things get really out of hand.
American Dollhouse is a fun but ultimately somewhat forgettable ride, combining elements we’ve all seen before into what is probably the grimiest package of this year’s SXSW. There isn’t a lot here that genre fans haven’t seen before in terms of plot elements, however, the performances are solid across the board. Laurén and Pribilski cut unforgettable figures in the film, with Sarah’s progressively decaying psyche giving the former a shockingly robust arc to play with and Sandy’s unhinged mania allowing the latter plenty of room to have fun with an outsized characterization that’s tough to shake. I just wish there was a little more meat on the bones here. However, if you’re a genre fan looking to spend eighty-five minutes watching two ladies to absolutely kill-krazy nuts on each other, American Dollhouse will scratch that itch just fine..