Psycho Sex Dolls

Doll Reaver

Psycho Sex Dolls
Written & Directed by David Wilde
UK 2025
Wilde Entertainment
Blu Ray Region 0

I jumped on board the kickstarter for this new movie by David Wilde fairly late in the game and I’d be lying if I said it was anything other than the bevy of gorgeous ladies on the posters combined with a very marketable title that attracted me to click on the pledge button. That being said, now I’ve seen the end product I’m rather glad I did. 

The basic plot set up to Psycho Sex Dolls, in a nutshell, is that an obnoxious porn photographer/video maker, Damien Self (played so brilliantly by Simon Weir), is losing money for his even less likeable boss James Steel (played by Kieran Chalker) and is given a week to come up with something fresh and innovative to bring new life into Steel’s failing porn empire. In addition to this, his top model Mia, played by a very interesting actress called Stella Paris, has walked out on him because, in the horrible digital age in which we live, most models can shoot, produce and upload their own content. 

After a week of drug fuelled attempts to get some script ideas together and get back some of his old models with no results… “I got giant tits done for you and they exploded!”… Damien resorts to an invite he got given to be a beta tester for a new, powerful and fully lifelike, AI enhanced series of customisable sex dolls... and he orders three. One is a deliberate copy of Mia and the other two are Chloe (played by Jamie L. Jones) and Sophie (played by Emma Cole). And it very quickly becomes clear that these uninhibited robots are the answer to his prayers when it comes to shooting new movies but also, it later turns out, writing and editing the porn content they are churning out. But the leader of the three sex dolls, Mia, is a slightly more advanced model than the others and she’s learning and making various judgements by herself, which could lead to trouble for some... at the end of a knife or a bullet, perhaps.

And it’s actually a fine film. Not quite what I’d expected but certainly a refreshing movie. It is, of course, as I mentioned in my recent review of Black Eyed Susan (you can read that one here) one of a number of movies made in the recent trend of adult sex doll tales but, it’s still a relatively small subgenre at present and this one explores its story in some style and is, again, a little different to some of the others.

Now, since I started this blog and had requests from young, independent UK directors eager to show their work (this one wasn’t a request by the way… I gravitated towards the product myself, not the other way around), I’ve seen my fair share of barely clinging together movies, sometimes of dubious quality. They come in three basic shapes… badly told with bad quality production values, pretty good with equally bad production values and, this kind... well crafted with some pretty good production values. So this one does look a whole lot more professional than some (not all) of the modern, microbudget UK indies I’ve seen over the course of the last 15 years or so.

Now, fair warning and as the title suggests… the film is pretty sleazy. But, for me, it felt like the kind of British sleazy I would associate with late 1980s/eary 1990s British sex shop era porn but, actually there to help fuel a story which happens to be set in that kind of industry as it is now. So there was almost a nostalgia rush involved for me, in a way. And there’s also some real character development here…

I mean, I was astonished to find that, even though he’s technically a poor excuse for a human being in some ways, I found myself mellowing and quite liking Damien after a while, actually rooting for him by the end. I hope he returns in the sequel. Similarly, by the end of the film, Mia’s basic internal chemistry has undergone a transformation and she’s evolved into something... perhaps someone... not totally evil or out for herself but an almost fair minded, if still bloodthirsty individual. She even has a moment towards the end which indicates she is perhaps developing her own emotional responses. Which I was totally there for.

The film starts off with a lot of frantic hand held camerawork and I was worried for a while that this and the mish mash look of different film stock styles were being edited in to cover up a possible lack of coverage in a few areas but, it’s not the case and the cinematography becomes more steady and fluid when required. It soon became apparent that these jolting collisions of styles were deliberate choices and were, one might say, even Godardian in their motive. I've not seen anything else directed by this guy as yet so it might well be a signature flourish, perhaps. And there are some nice ideas worked into the sleazy coating of the story which make this more than what you might at first be expecting (although there’s plenty of that stuff too). Such as the male lead conversing with is inner demons via a mirror.

And the film is quite funny in places too, with a very anti-woke nature. I mean, it’s not going to be for everyone (I work in an office with a very young team and they would be in an uproar about some of this dialogue) but, again, it’s refreshing to be able to watch something like this without wading through all that ‘triggering sensitivity’ tightrope walking. I’m sure the writer/director makes no apologies for lines like “Busty Big Brother. That sounds a bit tranny.” And it’s all quite entertaining it has to be said, especially in some of the porn movie parody parts such as the production of Spring Ball Breakers and the iconic Kubrickian flourishes lavished on A Cockwork Orgy. 

So, yeah, I have to say I was surprised at many things in this movie. The main male and female leads really inhabit their characters in a three dimensional way and it’s an entertaining yarn which will lead straight into a sequel as part of a planned franchise. So as soon as I finished watching this one, I rushed over to kickstarter to help fund the sequel, The Dolls, at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davidwilde66/the-dolls-0 and, if you want to catch up with this first movie, then you can watch it in various ways and places with some details on the film’s home page here.

So summing up, Psycho Sex Dolls is not a film I’d recommend to everybody but, I certainly think about half of my friends would enjoy it and I had a pretty good time with it myself. Roll on the next one, I can't wait!