Welcome to Dolly’s House (Taiwan, 2026)
Official synopsis
Maria stumbles into a surreal trap after she finds a video of a girl running from a mysterious woman and is drawn to an eerie, mind bending mansion. Fantasy-horror animation inspired by the classic literary anthology Taiping Guanji.
Review
Codirectors Rady Fu, Tree Muta, and Seven Ych have crafted an intriguing rotoscoped fear-fare animation feature in Welcome to Dolly’s House. The story follows young online influencer Maria as she and her deceitful boyfriend try to uncover the mystery of the woman named Dolly who appears in a video where a young girl suddenly vanishes into thin air.
The animation is absolutely gorgeous and is reason enough to recommend this supernatural offering, but the third act is also a strong reason to seek out this film, as it goes into quite unexpected territory.
Aficionados of creepy-doll horror should especially find Welcome to Dolly’s House an engaging watch. It’s a colorful, trippy, eye-popping experience.
Attack on Paradise (Belgium/Netherlands, 2026)
Official synopsis
Follows Suleyman, who returns home after a seven-year prison sentence to find his apartment block seized by drug dealers and must protect his mother from the surrounding violence.
Review
I’m admittedly a hard sell on action movies, especially those that follow by-the-numbers formulas: the protagonist is coming out of a difficult situation and is about to go into an even harder one, a relative is in peril, dozens of low-level skirmishes lead to gang fights and boss battles until the ultimate villain is confronted (and, of course, conquered), and all’s well that ends well. Attack on Paradise checks all those boxes, so the question is, does anything make Bob Coalers’ feature stand out from the pack?
Yes, in that Saïd Boumazoughe gives a solid performance as Suleyman, a man who is released from prison after seven years for attacking police officers only to find that his sick, elderly mother’s apartment building is now run by protagonist Prince (Achmed Akkabi) and his crew of drug-selling, flesh-peddling baddies. Boumazoughe’s character may not give viewers plenty to root for in the character arc originality department, but the actor does great work conveying emotion and performing fight choreography. Clara Cleymans gives a fine supporting performance as Yasmine, a police officer/single mom who forms an alliance with Suleyman.
Coalers certainly knows how to craft action sequences and build suspense, though action-film devotees will recognize all the beats. Attack on Paradise is slick, delivers the thrills that genre-film aficionados crave, and never lets up once things get underway. Fans of the genre will want to check this one out, and keep an eye on Boumazoughe (who also cowrote the screenplay with Sven Huybrechts and Salahdine Ibnou Kacemi) as an action star on the rise.
Welcome to Dolly’s House and Attack on Paradise screened as part of Fantastic Fest, which ran September 17-24, 2026 in Austin, Texas.
