Russian Doll

Tragically, we are not here today to talk about Russian Doll, the Netflix series starring Natsha Lyonne. We’re talking about a low budget 2016 film also called Russian Doll that isn’t as good on any given level.

Russian Doll involves multiple different mystery threads that all lead back to the production of a play. Viola, a lesbian cop begins investigating the play after a 911 call about a murder plot ends with the caller being abducted. When Viola begins her investigation, she additionally discovers that the play may be plagiarized and that the director may not be who she seems. As if there wasn’t enough going on in Viola’s life, her mother sets her up with a woman named Faith. Viola actually falls for Faith and has at least one pointless, sexy dream about her.

Russian Doll has a lot of different elements. There’s a romance, a serial killer thriller and a less thrilling mystery about artistic plagiarism. The film does not hurt for ideas. What it does hurt for is execution thereof. These different elements of the film are uneven to say the least. This means the film fails to feel like a cohesive whole. Russian Doll never feels like some grand, layer cake of crime and lesbianism. It’s a bunch of different elements that never blend together properly.

By far the best element is Darlene, the abducted woman plot. The scenes of Darlene and her captor have decent tone, pacing and performance. There’s genuine tension in seeing Darlene try and escape and her captor prevent her from doing so. These scenes are perfectly competent and the only part of this thriller that is actually thrilling.

This competent portion of the movie unfortunately makes everything else look even worse by comparison. Initially, I actually wondered if the bad acting was intention. It’s so bad I thought it must be some sort of comedic choice. I soon realized it wasn’t. But when the scene jumps from the Darlene abduction plot to anything else in the film, that theory raises its head again. Even the actor who plays the kidnapped is decent in the Darlene stuff and terrible in his other scenes! I don’t understand what happened.

Russian Doll is odd. A lot of stuff happens in the film, but because of its poor execution, it feels like none of it matters and there are no stakes. The film lacks focus as well as the ability to execute most of its ideas competently. The outlier is the kidnapping plot. This is by far the most competent yet it feels the least ambitious or passionate. Surprisingly, director Ed Gaffney’s filmography is mostly comedy. He should try his hand at directing a straight-up horror film. He shows a level of potential for the horror elements not found in any other aspect of this film.

Overall rating: 2.4/10

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