It would be too complimentary to call On The Doll a mess. Up until the third act the story is barely there and the ultimately useless relationships between the characters are vague. The film begins with the end but the audience is left confused as can be until the scene plays again because the only character in the portion of the bit they show makes his only appearance in that scene! That character, by the way, is the only somewhat respectable character in the film and that's simply because we don't know a thing about him.Now, I've got no problem with unlikable characters or entire casts of them for that matter... but every single other character in On The Doll was so downright despicable that I couldn't wait for them to stop contaminating my life or at least so they could stop dropping completely unnecessary F-bombs every other word. What the film lacks in substance is far from made up for by the useless frenetic camera and an uninspired, pseudo-industrial score (and calling it a score is an overstatement).
On The Doll tries to make a misanthropic statement regarding the underbelly of society but only succeeds with its in-your-face symbolism. Aside from that, it merely rubs dirt in the audience's face and demands, "Isn't this nasty!? Isn't it!?" Again, I have no problem with films that contain negative subject matter. Pervasive sex, excessive language or whatever is deemed fit to tell a story and deliver a message... it's all fine with me... but On The Doll fails in most every aspect. I imagine it only exists to shock teenagers into saying, "Woah, I don't want to be a prostitute" or at the very least, "Woah, that guy is really taking a pounding to his nuts."
