Welcome to The Shortening!
For those new around these parts, February is a special month here at the Doll's House. It's a short month that also happens to host the birthday of your short housekeeper (that's me) who, in case it wasn't clear, REALLY ENJOYS MOVIES ABOUT KILLER LITTLE THINGS.
Dolls, children, insects, leprechauns, whatever goobers are supposed to be... anything under 5'2 and murderous.
Over the last 17 years of this website and 44 years of my life, I've watched almost every killer doll movie with a budget of $500 or more ever made. PICKINS ARE GETTING SLIM.
When I first saw the poster for ROB1N (is it supposed to be caps? Unclear.), I worried that I had truly hit rock bottom. A M3GAN ripoff with a studio pedigree less reputable than The Asylum?
What was I getting myself into?
Turns out, a perfectly okay low budget movie.
Quick Plot: Robin celebrates his 11th birthday in the traditional Welsh way: slaughtering everyone at his party with an axe before being shot.
34 years later, his wealthy father Aiden has retired from a career in military technology to rest in his sprawling countryside mansion with housekeeper Freya and cat Smokey (don't get attached). A car accident has left Aiden something of an amnesiac, but he appears to have maintained enough of his engineering memories to build a robot reminiscent of his late son.
Enter some competition: the newly engaged nephew Leo and Lexi. Leo holds some resentment for his uncle not adopting him after the death of his parents (seemingly NOT connected to the aforementioned bloody birthday; this family has rough luck). He also owes quite a debt to a violent loan shark. Could Uncle Aiden's legendary safe save the day?
Maybe, but first we have a lot of murders to pile up in the estate's barn! Because for whatever reason, that's where Rob1n decides to do his dirty work.
Written and directed by Lawrence Fowler, ROB1N easily meets its low ambitions. The film is mostly confined to one location, and Fowler seems to know how to stage violence in shadow and amp up the horror without showing us his limitations. The storyline is probably a little more complicated than it needs to be. I spent far too much time in the first twenty minutes trying to unravel the timeline and still don't actually understand, well, what Rob1n is or how much Aiden is at fault. All that said, I needed a killer doll movie, and I found one that kept me interested for a breezy 90 minutes.
High Points
I won't spoil it here, but ROB1N has a decent twist in its last act that offered a nice ripple to where we thought the story was going
Low Points
There are a LOT of hints that ROB1N was made for less money than M3GAN's hair and wardrobe budget, but none more so than the fact that for whatever reason, almost all of the film's violence occurs in an empty, rarely lit barn
Lessons Learned
Never trust your audience to read text, even when it's on the screen long enough for them to wonder, "is the character going to audibly read this out loud?" before you let said character read it out loud
Welsh law requires a warrant to enter a house, but barns are free reign
More Welsh surprises: people will actually answer phonecalls from strangers
Rent/Bury/Buy
I went into ROB1N with the lowest of expectations, so it's hard to know if my middle of the road rating is genuine or just a "could have been so much worse." Fowler clearly knows how to put together a movie with limited resources. I wish this one had a little more umph or personality (especially in its titular villain) but I found myself pretty invested through the brief runtime. It's not a strong recommendation, but if you, like me, have exhausted cinema's homicidal doll output, then maybe this will somewhat work for you too.
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