I had finally had a chance to see Malice@Doll in full last year. Up until that point, I had only ever been able to see parts of the movie, as nowhere online seemed to have the full version. But last year, myself and a couple of friends sat down and saw it in full. We didn’t like it. Our consensus was that Malice@Doll had some sweet visuals, and not much else. But in that time, I kind of forgot a lot about the movie, and I’ve also been in something of a “Y2K” mood lately; that short time period that began at the tail end of the 90s, and ended on September 11th, 2001. The fashion. the music, the games, and the art. That specific aesthetic that, despite everything, has never really been properly replicated.
Malice@Doll is a 2001 sci-fi body horror CGI film written by Chiaki Konaka shortly after his work on Serial Experiments Lain, and long before he lost his fucking mind. It is the most early-2000s CGI; a perfect marriage of Czechoslovakian stop-motion and an FMV from a Playstation game with a moderately-sized budget. The humanoid models all feature a shiny, plastic look. Animation is incredibly jerky, moving below the standard 25 frames per second. This movie was made with the specific intention of using the limited technology of the time as its entire visual gestalt. Stilted animation and off-putting models work well for horror. As I said before, the visuals are amazing. Malice@Doll looks fucking great, even looking better than a number of CGI films released today. Just looking at screenshots, I knew that my goth otaku ass needed to see this movie.
I don’t want to spend too much time talking about how good the movie looks. Anybody with functioning eyesight can tell that it’s one of the most hauntingly beautiful things in existence. Instead, I would rather take a look at the story and the writing to try and remind myself of what exactly it was that soured me on the whole film.
As mentioned earlier, Malice@Doll takes place long after humanity has died out. Of what, we are never told, probably the same things killing us now. The only thing left alive are service robots, continuing their programmed tasks. Among them are the Dolls, robotic sex workers now in a world with no clientele. This is where we meet our main character, Malice Doll. I should point out that everyone’s last name is actually their job title, so we’ll be quickly introduced to characters like Doris Doll, Heather Doll, Joe Admin (the administrator), and Meliza Piper (the plumber). The movie begins with Malice having a dream of a bouncing ball. This is unusual, since robots can’t dream, they are just machines. Afterwards, Malice begins walking around the streets, looking for Johns, to no avail. Everything is as normal as they can be in this situation, until Malice suddenly becomes damaged, leaking coolant from her left eye, and leaking oil from between her legs. Back at home in some sort of robot facility (there’s not exactly any extended scenes showing off the topography, so there’s a bit of guesswork on the viewers part), Joe Admin gives her the order to visit the robot repairer upstairs to get fixed. He also warns her to be careful, as a former bodyguard machine, Devo Lukacyte, is on a rampage and will attack anything he sees.
Of course, Malice is almost immediately spotted by Devo Lukacyte. Before she can be destroyed, she’s rescued by the plumber bot Meliza Piper, who uses her specific skills to pull Malice up to another floor. After this, Malice discovers an area in the building she has never seen before. This area is a surreal set of hallways and a large circular room that houses some unknown entity. This entity then produces a number of tentacles from itself, and proceeds to physically and sexually assault Malice.
this is as much of this attack that i’ll show
Some time later, Malice wakes up in her room again. But things are different now: she’s become human. Her body looks and feels different than before. She feels actual emotions now. Malice has no idea that she’s actually a human, but knows that she’s different. This leads to a problem: none of the other robots recognize her. As she’s not a robot, this new Malice isn’t recognized by their scanners. Malice is rejected, first by Joe Admin. An emotional Malice takes off running away, directly back into the area patrolled by Devo Lukacyte, who threatens Malice with very suggestive threats. In the ensuing chaos, Devo Lukacyte temporarily incapacitates an intervening Joe Admin, and brutally decapitates Meliza Piper, who had reappeared to pull Malice to safety again. In her grief, the only thing Malice can think to do is give the remains of Meliza a kiss, “the only thing I can offer.” This is when we find out that Malice’s kiss can reanimate dead robots. Except that this isn’t a normal reanimation, this turns Meliza into a half-robot, half-organic monstrosity. Meliza attacks Lukacyte again, leading to both of them dying, Meliza for good, given her now human state.
Okay, so I think a number of you have probably already figured out what this movie is meant to be an allegory of, just in case the literal rape scene and the content warning at the beginning was not enough of a dead giveaway. The symbolism of a robot Malice crying and bleeding is pretty obvious. Malice being physically threatened by someone that she would have trusted and who is supposed to protect her. Malice becoming “different” after her assault, with Joe Admin outright telling her that she’s “not one of us.” Malice not understanding why any of it even happened in the first place. Malice@Doll is a movie about rape, and the direct emotional and even physical fallout that comes from it, both from the victim and the people around her.
Following the fight between Meliza and Lukacyte, Malice returns home again, where she is rejected by her fellow dolls, who also do not recognize nor trust her, and kick her out of their home. Malice, now hanging out an empty red light district, begins having flashbacks to her time as a sex worker, which causes her great distress. After all, being a robot, it wasn’t like she could consent to the degrading and even violent acts her human clients would do to her. During her breakdown, she’s found and comforted by one of the dolls, Heather. Malice thanks Heather by kissing her, causing Heather to violently and painfully mutate. Malice shows no concern over Heather’s condition, telling her that she’ll be fine, despite the visual evidence to the contrary.
This begins the second act of the movie, where Malice and Heather kiss every robot that they can find, transforming them as well. I need to go back to talking about the visuals, because the body horror of Malice@Doll is pretty fucking incredible:
Impressive visuals aside, this brings us to the next big theme of the movie. The old saying, “hurt people hurt people.” Malice has been traumatized, shunned because of it, and then proceeds to hurt the one person who still cares for her, and then essentially gaslight her while she’s clearly terrified and in pain. Malice and Heather continue their path of harming others, making everyone just like them. The cycle of abuse continues. It isn’t until Malice is confronted by Joe Admin that she feels any guilt or remorse for her actions, finally seeing not just the literal visual horrors she’s created, but the emotional torment as well, with Doris Doll and Misty Doll becoming hypersexual, Doris even constantly engaging in sex acts with a resurrected and mutated Devo Lukacyte. Malice convinces herself that the only way to try and fix things is to go back to the room where she was attacked. She’s accompanied by Joe Admin, who is unable to see the doorway that Malice can.
Earlier in the movie, Joe Admin refuses to be kissed by Heather Doll, and prior to arriving to this mysterious room that only Malice can see, he rejects a kiss from Malice. But then Joe has a change of heart. He asks Malice to kiss him, so that he can see what she sees, so that he can understand her better. Malice refuses to. It’s interesting that the one character who actually gives their consent to being kissed by a Doll is rejected. The one time someone doesn’t try to force themselves on him, or try to trick him into being kissed, he’s not desired. Joe Admin shows genuine concern for Malice, and she turns him away. Even as Malice wants to atone for her actions, she’s still only interested in kissing someone when she gets to be in control.
This uncomfortable, awkward movie about rape and abuse is gearing up. I was asking myself why I didn’t like Malice@Doll the first time I watched it, and then I was very quickly reminded. I was so down on Malice@Doll because the ending fucking sucks. The first half is fine, but the second half falls off real quick. Joe Admin, desperate to help Malice, kills Devo Lukacyte, and forces a kiss from Doris Doll, transforming him into the same bio-creatures that everyone else is. This part is actually interesting! The only way for Joe Admin to understand the pain of someone who has been assaulted, is to assault someone himself. The protector, the guardian, the man who is supposed to support you becomes the man who hurts you. And even then, he still can’t help Malice. Rather, Malice confronts the entity that attacked her, tearing apart its outer shell, discovering that it contains a body that looks exactly like her. This is where things get too surreal for their own good. Malice suddenly sprouts wings, and becomes encased in the pieces of shell she removed, while her double slowly wakes up and says that she wishes to dream a different dream.
This new dream resets the status quo, where we’re back in a post-apocalyptic world full of robots, only now Malice does not exist, nor has she ever existed, at least not as a robot. In this new reality, Malice is an angelic being who flies around and sings. Nobody has any memory of there ever being a robot named Malice, except for all the robots who do have a memory of there being a robot named Malice. Doris Doll and Joe Admin are pretty quick to remember Malice, while everyone else is perplexed. It’s pretty fucking stupid. You can maybe make a connection to this being how we as a society like to ignore victims so much it’s as if they never existed, but I think you’re giving too much credit to a bad scene.
It doesn’t really help that this ending comes across as being somehow hopeful. Like, this is a horror movie about rape where every character mutates into some sort of horrid bio-monster. It’s fine to end things on a downer! Could have ended the movie with Malice being absorbed into the big monster at the end as an allegory for what trauma can do to a person. Good horror makes you think as much as it terrifies you. But this ending really just fucking kills it, and everything up to this point ends up falling flat. In resetting the status quo, nobody learns anything. What about the mystery room with this big orb? Is that not going to attack a different Doll now? Are we not going to further explore Joe Admin chastising Malice for her actions, blaming her for ruining the perfect world he tried so hard to control, despite this world clearly not being perfect? I mean, He runs a complex with broken robots, like Meliza Piper and Elza Doll, the latter of which is barely capable of movement. There is a scene where the Dolls need to go to a refueling station to oil themselves, only to be denied as, due to their status as sex workers, they are a “lesser” form of robot and the oil is instead going to robots who provide essential services. Why couldn’t Joe Admin use his powers of administration to get them that oil? Why is Joe Admin ordering people to enter parts of a building where a giant rampaging robot with chainsaws for arms is running around? This rebooted timeline shows us that Joe Admin can take out Devo Lukacyte single-handedly, so why didn’t he do it the first time? There is an entire point to be made about the world being so dangerous for women, especially sex workers, while male authority turns a blind eye, assuming that everything is okay because they don’t see it themselves, but it’s never followed up on.
It’s such a fucking shame. Chiaki Konaka, recent Digimon stage play aside, is by no means a terrible writer. He wrote fucking Lain! Ultimately, Malice@Doll is this movie that builds and builds and has all this potential, until this rushed ending happens that causes the bottom to fall out and everything is fucked. At least it looks good.
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