NYAFF 2025: ‘Dollhouse’ Review
Shinobu Yaguchi’s films tend to be a balm for the soul. Depicting outcasts, deadbeats, misfits, and the aimless in their pursuit of something more from life, films like Waterboys, Wood Job!, and Swing Girls all follow a similar formula, where characters support one another until they succeed in achieving unlikely ambitions. His films are often infectious, breezy affairs that double as entertaining and motivational. There’s also a healing quality to Yaguchi’s films that the characters experience as they find community, hope, and direction against the grain of society. It’s the notion of healing and moving on from despair that Yaguchi successfully turns toward the horror genre with his latest film, Dollhouse. Ditching the exuberance of his previous films, Dollhouse is a surprisingly bleak affair that engulfs its bizarre premise with an increasingly suffocating atmosphere and terrifying sequences. A notable addition to the J-horror canon, balancing cheap thrills with a grief-stricken narrative, Yaguchi delivers a memorably creepy mystery.
There’s an inherent silliness to Dollhouse that has plagued many films of a similar ilk. The doll horror genre has its creepy moments, but nowadays it often veers into the surreal or silly, making it easy to feel slightly removed from the stakes. Even the few films that attempt to be scary frequently fail in their efforts. Why that might be the case is explored in Yaguchi’s screenplay, as Yoshie (Masami Nagasawa) suffers the tragic loss of her 5-year-old daughter, Mei, and after a period of mourning, finds herself in better spirits after purchasing an antique doll that resembles her late daughter. Through doll therapy, it finally feels like she might be able to move forward with her life. However, with the arrival of Yoshie and Tadahiko’s (Koji Seto) second child, Mai, the couple begin to distance themselves from the doll. It’s not until Mai and the doll form a bond that it becomes clear that there may be something sinister about Yoshie’s doll that could threaten the lives of everyone who crosses its path.
Opening with a set-up that turns soul-crushing within minutes, Dollhouse is always concerned with parental fears and how grief spirals into every nook and cranny of someone’s existence. There are pockets of happiness to be found throughout Yaguchi’s film, but it’s often weighed down by the difficulty of completely moving on from trauma. Yoshie’s mental health is frequently called into question as it’s the easy answer when confronted by circumstances beyond comprehension. And the death of a child is anything but normal. However, it’s that death and the effect that grieving can have on those in your life that Yoshie’s doll represents. A force that cannot be understood without leaving a mark, the doll becomes something more than just an analog for grief; it becomes the fallout of a healing process that needs time to succeed.
There are two approaches to grief that Dollhouse takes, reflected in the film’s division of the parents. They rarely spend time together in the movie, as Tadahiko goes about his day-to-day work at the hospital, and Yoshie immerses herself in her maternal role to both the doll and Mai. As such, a lot of the character development is placed on Yoshie as opposed to Tadahiko, and the film slightly suffers at a certain point when it tries to bring the two together on a journey of catharsis while wrestling with their shared trauma. There’s never really a sense that they’re in this together, but more that Tadahiko is enduring while Yoshie becomes increasingly delusional from the doll’s presence. The emotional stakes for Yoshie feel far greater than those for Tadahiko, and it’s something the movie never truly confronts. Once it fully embraces its supernatural horror, Dollhouse focuses on making every scene tense and terrifying, hoping that the work put in earlier pays off. Fortunately, it mostly succeeds on this front, despite some shortcomings.
Conceptual terror runs through the veins of Yaguchi’s screenplay, where successfully planting the idea of something terrifying can yield far stronger results than in the depiction. Parental concerns, supernatural folklore, and clever switcheroos augment already creepy moments with an uneasy sense of dread. The opening scene is an example of Yaguchi playing with expectations and letting imagination take over while still providing a skin-crawling scream that satisfies both the imagined horrors and the reality of the situation. The screenplay feels a little stretched out as it explores horror tropes and extends the mystery behind the doll’s origins to its breaking point, but even in its most generic moments, Yaguchi taps into something unnerving that is not dependent on imagery to elicit scares.
Dollhouse will undoubtedly feel like an anomaly from a director whose horror roots are buried beneath delightfully upbeat expressions of finding a place in the world. It’s the approach to seeking catharsis and fitting back into society that has driven many of Yaguchi’s characters, and what’s compelling with Dollhouse is that he hasn’t strayed from that formula. The odd becomes the traumatic, and while the film’s trajectory goes surprisingly bleak, it begins auspicious enough that you can see the light on the other side of the tunnel. What follows is an experience that barrels headfirst into clichés and emerges with a potent mix of frightening images and unsettling tension, derived from a deeply personal pain. It might not be unfiltered nightmare fuel, but the crushing psychological drama that unfolds will linger long after the credits roll.
The 2025 edition of the New York Asian Film Festival will take place from July 11th to 27th in New York City. Find the full 2025 line-up here.
