Molly (2017) Artsploitation Blu-ray Review

Plot: A girl living alone in a post apocalyptic wasteland finds herself hunted down by marauders who want her to fight in their fighting pit for their entertainment.

Review: The apocalypse is uncharacteristically colorful in this English language effort from the Netherlands. Bright, vivid colors pop like a comic book, and its central heroine is a Napoleon Dynamite looking girl named Molly (Julia Batelaan), who carries her weapons – a bow and arrow, a pet hawk, and a holstered gun – on her, but her secret weapon is a rage-like superpower that can render her attackers dead and bleeding from every orifice. She rescues a little girl in need of a caretaker, and they are both being pursued by several factions: a scientific bunch, and marauding collectors who work for a sadistic ringmaster who creates zombies with a serum he’s concocted. His zombies become champions in his circus arena of death, and he keeps hearing about this Molly person who is rumored to be a great fighter with uncontrollable powers, and he wants her for his arena. He sends out his best – a bionic-enhanced female fighter with a modified arm – and sure enough Molly is brought before him and put into the arena, but it doesn’t take long for her to escape and execute bloody vengeance and reclaim the little girl that was taken from her.

Geared to be the next Turbo Kid, Molly unfortunately fails on almost every level it aspires to accomplish. The too-flashy and unfocused direction by Colinda Bongers and Thijs Meuwese ruin what might have been a curious little apocalyptic action movie, and the clunky dialogue, unconvincing fight choreography, and too goofy set-ups only amplify the movie’s shortcomings. There is a seed of a good movie here, and it might have worked as a short film, but at 91 minutes, the movie just can’t sustain itself on colorful imagery. I admire its independent spirit, but Molly really comes across like a LARP movie for apocalyptic, steampunk fans.