The Dollmaker
2017 · 9m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Al Lougher
Genres: drama, fantasy, horror
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A mother who has just lost a child visits a dollmaker who offers a way for mother and child to meet again. The small miracle carries major consequences.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The Dollmaker does the thing everyone expects it to do—grief as portal, loss as transaction—and then stops. It's competent melancholia, but it doesn't have the stomach to actually *break* the premise; it genuinely believes in the small miracle it's selling.
Lougher understands the grammar of fairytale-horror and restraint; the film sits in the tradition of Angela Carter and del Toro without imitating either, and its refusal to overdetermine the mother's choice is formally brave—that kind of considered ambiguity that separates curated shorts from competent ones.
The decision to keep the dollmaker herself mostly *off* camera, letting her presence suggest itself through framing and reaction, is the lever that makes this work: it transforms what could've been a Gothic villain into something genuinely uncanny, and that single restraint lifts the whole piece.