If you invest in a ride that’s more about senseless gore and grue with a killer doll on a rampage that feels like a long, internet comedy skit, Karl Holt’s “Benny Loves You” might just satisfy your appetite. I’m not one that ever really turns down a movie about killer dolls or puppets, so “Benny Loves You” kept my attention most times. It’s weird, and bizarre, and gloriously deadpan. Plus, Benny is such an interesting and menacing monster, that I bought his ability to inflict sheer chaos on anything with a pulse.
Jack as a young boy was terrified of the dark, and was given the talking doll Benny to help him. Growing up with Benny, he decides to give him away. But strange supernatural forces turn Benny in to a sentient doll with a thirst for murder, and chaos. Anxious to keep Benny’s habits under wraps, Jack deals with Benny all the while garnering affection for a co-worker, and competing for a bigger position as a toy designer in his company.
If you want any kind of reasoning or logic behind anything that happens here, you’re plum out of luck. That might sound like nitpicking since it’s a movie about a killer kids’ toy that delights in murdering people, but I would have loved to learn more behind the scenes. Director and writer Karl Holt seems to allude toward some kind of supernatural force at play and can never decide what motivates Benny. Is Benny a monster or a conscious being? Is he jealous or just sadistic? Is he mad at his owner Jack for pushing him aside, or is he feeding in to Jack’s intrusive thoughts? While “Benny Loves You” revels in just being a senseless parade of the killer doll destroying everything from hapless apartment dwellers, to stray cats, Holt just brushes past a lot more pressing questions we’re left with.
What brings the toys to life? Why are they brought to life? What or who empowers them? Why do they emerge as violent and murderous? How in the heck did Jack and his girlfriend talk their way out of murder charges? How were any of them able to convince others that killer dolls were the culprits? Did anyone ever find the bodies Jack buried in his back yard? Did Jack like when Benny inflicted violence on others or not? Can Benny die? In the annals of killer toy movies, “Benny Loves You” is one of the okayest that’s ever been made. I say that because while Karl Holt’s horror comedy is creative and funny, Holt cuts corners in terms of story and exposition quite often. Things happen in “Benny Loves You” because. That’s it. Take it or leave it. There’s a masterpiece hidden within “Benny Loves You,” but as is, it’s a perfectly serviceable and entertaining bit of absurdist horror comedy.