Genevieve (2021) Review
Writer/director/actor/everything else Nicholas Michael Jacobs first introduced Genevieve the killer doll in a segment of his 2019 anthology film Urban Fears. Since then she’s returned as one of Two Twisted Tales and in a trio of short films, Genevieve, Genevive Wreaks Havok and Camo vs. Genevieve. Now she’s getting her own feature, or a forty-five minutes run time, a long short.
The plot is fairly simple, a writer (Nicholas Michael Jacobs) is trying to find the right story for a horror script. He keeps looking through his collection of what looks like Halloween decorations for ideas, but they all turn into stories involving Genevieve. As he types, we see them played out. This part of the film might be familiar. His stories are the earlier shorts repurposed into for this new project. So if you’ve already seen them you can skip over the first twenty minutes of Genevieve. That’s the point at which a suspicious package turns up at our hero’s door. I’m sure you can guess who’s inside.
The twenty or so minutes of new footage unfortunately doesn’t add anything new to the mix except for the final image. It’s the same cat and mouse games we saw in the shorts, it just lasts much longer. And while Genevieve may be more vocal thanks to Alan Maxson (Xenophobia, Blade: The Iron Cross) she’s still a rigid, inarticulate doll whose lips don’t move when she talks.
I understand that he’s working on very limited budgets, but Jacobs has to offer up something more than a doll chasing him around an apartment. That wore out after Genevive’s second appearance. Even a couple of other characters and some dialogue would help. So would a doll that could at least move its arms and legs, but I suppose that’s out of his budget range.
Genevive was originally intended to be released on Vimeo this month, there was even a pre-order link for it. Instead, he released it on his YouTube channel free to watch a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully, he’s realizing he needs to offer up something more than a one-man show if he wants people to keep watching his films, let alone pay to watch them. You can check his website to find out more.