Streaming Review of "Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust" by Jason Minton
Available Now on Amazon Video

Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust – 2016

Production by: iDiC Entertainment
Distribution by: Edel Media & Entertainment



A group of contestants are offered a job on a reality show. They’re taken out deep into the woods where they must fight to be the last person not caught by a slasher in the woods. Little do they know that for once a reality show is real. An eccentric millionaire who likes to watch people die, known as the Watcher (Richard Tyson) has rigged the woods with cameras and lured people seeking fame and in need of money into the woods where his personal serial killer, Prisoner AYO-886 awaits to play with his dolls. “He really wants to play with you.”

This is the second part of the series known as Playing with Dolls in the U.S. and Leatherface (no relation) in the U.K. by writer/director Rene Perez. The first installment created an interesting masked killer, released from an insane asylum to kill on camera for the rich Watchers pleasure. In this sequel, a similar formula is repeated with the unsuspecting being lured back into the woods for more carnage. This time we’re given a bigger cast to die, a bigger budget to kill them with and a bigger knife that's terrifying enough to match the killers mask.

The acting really doesn’t improve from the first film. Beautiful woman are still cast to show off their breasts before they die. The script is still muddled down with rich men in mansions, a fake reality show and commandos in the woods without good explanations of why everything is happening. Though it had many flaws, I saw promise in the original Playing with Dolls. A year later, a faux ending was the real killer in this sequel. Whether you’re setting up to be continued or you just ran out of funds, this ending is no way to treat and audience you want to grow over a series.

1 out of 5 Headless Critics