Crew
Director/Screenplay/Photography – Rene Perez, Producer – John D. Fife, Music – Rene Perez also known as The Darkest Machines, Visual Effects – Ignace Aleya, Makeup Effects – Marcus Koch & Oliver Müller. Production Company – Von Metz Entertainment.
Cast
Nicole Stark (Sara Curry), Jade Ellis (Mia), Kyle Clark (Timothy Curry), John Scuderi (Bob), Malorie Glavan (Alica), Stormi Maya (Girl in Caves)
Plot
Sara Curry goes up to her husband Timothy’s cabin to surprise him before he arrives. She is shocked by the appearance of Mia, who says she is Timothy’s girlfriend, and realises that Timothy has been keeping a mistress. Mia’s car has broken down and Sara is reluctantly forced to let her in lest she freeze in the snow outside. However, a hulking figure in a mask is lurking outside and begins killing all in and around the cabin.
Playing with Dolls: Havoc was the third and so far final entry in a trilogy of Slasher Films from director Rene Perez. (See below for Rene Perez’s other films). The series began with Playing with Dolls (2015) where an actress is lured to a remote cabin in the woods where she is stalked by a hulking maniac in a barbed wire mask. This was followed by Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust (2016), which had people lured to a different cabin to be stalked. All of this was apparently masterminded by wealthy Richard Tyson who watched through hidden cameras as a kind of live snuff movie. In both the sequels, the actor behind the barbed wire mask is only referred to as a prisoner and their number.
Playing with Dolls: Havoc is fairly much exactly the same as the previous two films were. There is the hulking killer hidden behind a mask that is wrapped in barbed wire (a similar figure turns up in a number of Rene Perez’s other films) and which the credits only refer to as being played by a numbered prisoner. There is a group of people isolated at a cabin who are stalked. The various murders take place with a bloody brutality.
That said, Playing with Dolls: Havoc changes the formula of the other two films around in some ways. One of these is that Perez comes up with quite an interesting scenario at the cabin (in the mountains this time as opposed to woods). Perez regular Nicole Stark plays a wife who goes up to the cabin to surprise her husband only for his mistress Jade Ellis to turn up for a rendezvous. The confrontation, the situation where Nicole is forced to let Jade in lest she freeze, the twist as the husband turns up and then as the two women are forced together for the sake of survival as the killer strikes is reasonably well played and gives more substance than usual to one of the Playing with Dolls films. Nicole Stark even gives quite a believable performance as the wife.
There is also an opening sequence that is unrelated to what follows where former Penthouse Pet Stormi Maya enters a cavern and follows a series of notes left for her, in the process stripping down to put on a ballgown, only to find the killer waiting. There are also some handlers in SWAT gear with tranquiliser tipped guns present. The credits montage that follows contains a clip of Richard Tyson, the billionaire who had set everything up in the first film, and we get the impression he is still behind this. The same security contractors also turn up in the end scene, but it is never made clear what their purpose is.
Rene Perez appeared with the zombie Western The Dead and the Damned (2010). He made two sequels The Dead and the Damned and the Darkness (2014) and The Dead and the Damned 3: Ravaged (2018) and two further Western/genre hybrids with Alien Showdown: The Day the Old West Stood Still (2013) and Prey for Death (2015). He has made various other horror films with Demon Hunter (2012), The Burning Dead (2015), The Obsidian Curse (2016), From Hell to the Wild West (2017), Death Kiss (2018), Cabal (2020), Cry Havoc (2020), Legend of Hawes (2022), The Vampire and the Vigilante (2024) and Meteor: Final Impact (2025), as well as a trilogy of fairytale adaptations with The Snow Queen (2013), Sleeping Beauty (2014) and Little Red Riding Hood (2015).
Trailer here