Dorothy Mills

source: Dorothy Mills

source: Dorothy Mills

source: Dorothy Mills

I'm astounded that this 'movie' is available for purchase on DVD and marketed as being like the Exorcist Huh? The Exorcist did not look like a cheap student movie, it had exotic locations, amazing score and sound, fine acting etc etc. Dorothy does not, it is low budget 100% Low budget is fine, great even. If it's countered with creativity then amazing things are still possible - just look at some of Jon Carpenters early movies, or Tarkovsky who made artistically acclaimed films shot in a field. It looks like the outdoor scenes in Dorothy, those that are real, are shot in a beautiful part of Ireland possibly, but the location is sadly underused. Why not use it? Why not use real locations? A real house? Instead we get lots of studio shots with lighting that is absolutely dire throughout - badly placed, shaky. Wow. Most of the sets are cheap and ugly, the costumes are crap, the acting is sub-par across the board save for the psychologist who tries hard but looks like she know's she made a mistake getting involved in this. Maybe it's why she's chain smoking cigarettes? The scenes in the car look so bad they would've been better off making them look intentionally so. Even better go out in a real car and shoot from a different angle? At any moment I expected an Anglia commercial break to come on because this is television production values, and not modern ones either. Dorothy is in the league of an 80's episode of Doctor Who or Rentaghost at best, only without the charm, and actually it looks like a student short film stretched out to one hour and a half Let's not bother mentioning the music and sound because even if these were the best on earth they still could not have saved this. Actually lets mention the sound because I simply can't let that pass - hollow footsteps and dialogue/adr, the complete absence of exterior ambiance most of the time even when the entire cast is next to a river!! Totally inconsistent and patchy 'dark' ambiance elsewhere. Come on, that's inexcusable outside of a student production A complete absence of movie scale design. Just avoid this at all costs please

Acting, music, story and the place that the movie have been shot...all these elements combine the movie can be described with one single word : EXCELLENT! I have not watched such a great movie since ORPHANAGE. Same genre but the script is different. No matter how many minutes that the players have on this picture, but all the characters were fitting to their roles greatly and from begging to the end, you feel uncomfortable but curious as well. What you need to do is turning off the lights and leaving yourself to the atmosphere of the movie. Guarantee : You will enjoy and at the end, you will start to think "Why didn't I hear about this movie so far?" 10/10 Highly recommended.

I really want to give this 8 stars out of 10 but I gave it 10/10 in hopes that it will bump up the rating. I love these kinds of movies, and this is probably the best one of its kind. I don't know what explains the mediocre rating on IMDb. If you are a fan of ghost stories, then run to the video store to rent this. You will see a film that will keep you guessing throughout. Just when you think you've got it figured, it will turn in a completely different direction, all the while maintaining a consistent story. I kept expecting that the story would make predictably disappointing turns, that would make me groan; but it didn't. And the ending... that really makes it. All this and Carice van Houten too... Plus the young actress who played Dorothy was amazing. I would recommend watching this just to see her performance.

This film is carried on convincingly by Dutch actress Carice van Houten. She plays a psychiatrist who is sent to a remote island at the Atlantic coast of Ireland's province of Donegal. There she has to work her way in with a very closed, off-handed local community to help a young girl in trouble. This community definitively looks Protestant, and behaves in a Protestant way. The Republic of Ireland is known for her Roman Catholic faith. Apart from this, 'Dorothy Mills' makes a good watch. Those familiar with Ireland's west coast will warm up to this film's rich use of its scenery & spirits. The latter includes an extensive array of fairy tales, which connects well with 'Dorothy Mills' somewhat improbable plot. These spirits show themselves once again in this film's tragic end: Irish history is littered with tragedy.

I tried watching this with an open mind and really wanted to like it. Usually I enjoy complicated plots if they are well-done. This movie made very little sense. It's worse than Watchmen and that says a lot. If you watch this movie, don't take your eyes from the screen for a moment, keep a score sheet (like in baseball) to keep up with the characters and what they're doing, their relationships to each other, and the relevance of their individual plot threads. Maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did. My husband and I kept asking, "Who is that and why are they suddenly here?" The ending made a little bit more sense than the rest of the movie, but, as I said, you have to pay attention like you're studying for the SATs in order to keep up with this drek.

This was disappointing. I got the feeling it could have been great, the girl playing Dorothy was awesome. But it just never went anywhere. I found my attention wandering far too often and parts of it were plain boring. A lot of scenes were pointless, I hate movies that have footage that's really just filling in time. That happened a lot here. There was no suspense at all, in fact the direction somehow managed to kill off the few moments that could have brought at least a little tension. Definitely no thrills to be found and no scares or horror. At best this is a mediocre drama with a bit of a ghost story thrown in. Some of the characters behaviour is ridiculous and I seemed to spend a lot of time laughing at how silly it all was. Why doesn't the psychiatrist ever wipe all that blood off the girls face? How can the girl wake up 5 minutes after being given a tranquilizer and blithely climb out of windows to terrorise people? Should we start counting how many times we see blood dripping into a sink of water...? How can one girl be several people all at once (eg when they are mocking the psych outside the hotel or when they kill the dog). Come to think of it, why do these low rent flicks always have to kill a dog anyway? What was with the sheep thing? Why was all the food white? Why would anyone stay on an island full of deranged people who wish them harm? And what's with the blonde chicks stupid-ass hair-cut? These were the sort of thoughts that banged around in my head so you can probably guess it's not a film I can recommend. Nothing grabbed or intrigued me about this flick. Although the acting from the young girl was first-rate little else in this dreary mess is worth watching. I give it two points for the blonde chick with the stupid hair.

This is one of those movies you may only first discover in the video store, as I did. So, I read the reviews and a bit of the plot on the DVD, and decided, "Why not?" It turned out to be quite a movie, filled with intriguing moments of mystery and surrealism. This ain't a predictable run-of-the-mill Dead Teenager Movie. This is a film about atmosphere and small chills. However, one thing that is predictable is that it uses a disturbed young girl as a main character. You know her name just by reading the title. But I didn't care about the cliché because the actress playing her gave a really believable performance. After Dorothy allegedly harms a baby she's babysitting, a psychiatrist named Jane goes to the island Dorothy lives on to examine her behaviour. Turns out Jane gets more than she bargained for. The community on the island is very secretive and strange, plus most of the folks don't take kindly to Jane's snooping. So, who is Dorothy? Is she demonically possessed, like in "The Exorcist"? If you can take a minor spoiler, she has a personality disorder. That's all I'll reveal. The rest is for you to discover. Jane is a likable person, and so is Dorothy, actually. She's not crazy by choice, if you can call her crazy. The two actresses work well, together, as the mystery in the film grows. The film gets its chills from what's shown on the screen, not from what's eventually (and I mean eventually) going to be shown, like a generic cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer from another movie. "Dorothy Mills" is smarter than that. There's a scene where a man sees a bunch of dead sheep. It's not revealed at first what he sees, but when we also see it after a few seconds, it's scary. We also ask, "What the hell is going on?" After the movie was over, I luckily wasn't left scratching my head about the main details; only a couple of the small ones, like the chase at the beginning, which causes Jane to crash her car into the water. I know it's related to the end, but... I dunno. Well, it's nothing to dwell over. "Dorothy Mills" is refreshing, intense, and well acted. One last thing I just have to note is the scene with an old creepy-looking lady playing her son's guitar. That alone is just pure awesomeness. She may be old, but she's young @ heart.