The Horror of Dolores Roach Season 1 Review: A Bloody, Entertaining Dark Tale

Horror and Broadway meet, culminating in an intriguing and, at times, too fast-paced story in The Horror of Dolores Roach Season 1.

The series follows Dolores Roach, a woman having to find her way in a world that has become completely foreign to her after spending 16 years inside a New York Corrections facility for a crime she didn’t commit. But just as she thinks she’s about to get a fresh start, her world is turned upside down, and she finds herself in a corner she can’t escape.

It all begins at the end, introducing viewers to Dolores Roach as a character in a stage production by the same name as the series. We quickly discover that the play is an adaptation of a true crime podcast. It’s almost immediately made clear that the infamous Dolores is dead. But as the young actor discovers, the public’s theory is plain wrong.

The way viewers get to hear Dolores’ story is interesting, doling out pieces of the puzzle that makes up the real Dolores we meet on The Horror of Dolores Roach Season 1 Episode 1, “They Called Me Magic Hands.”

Justina Machado shines as Dolores, bringing softness and vulnerability to the character pairing well with the determined, tough exterior. Machado’s ability to convey the entire spectrum of emotion with the subtlest facial expressions is impressive.

The actor’s expressiveness, mixed with the voiceover, helps highlight the little moments of madness that start to peek through after every kill. The moment she finds herself entranced by the smell of the candles, only to return to the reality of her actions, is one of the more obvious moments indicating some level of descent into madness.

Machado leads an incredibly talented cast, each ensemble member bringing something special to enrich the world viewers are dropped in from Kita Updike as the sweet, helpful Nellie to Alejandro Hernandez as the well-intentioned, traumatized man-child Luis and K. Todd Freeman as the delivery man turned conspiracy theorist Jeremiah, there is no shortage of fascinating stories to mine.

But therein lies the problem with the season and the story as it’s set out. There are so many aspects of Dolores and the rest of the ensemble’s stories that are merely introduced and seem genuinely interesting that aren’t followed through on or given enough time to sit with as a viewer.

I understand the kind of restrictions eight half-hour episodes put on the storytelling. But stories like Jeremiah’s ominous hints of a history with Luis’s dad and even Luis’s heartbreaking story we hear in Episode 7, “Bye, Felicia,” should have more time to sit with viewers. Though, Alejandro Hernandez’s acting in that scene feels so visceral that it will leave you second-guessing everything we’ve seen of Luis up to this point.

The horror aspects of the story are impeccably done with a level of skill you can expect from a Blumhouse production. The cannibalism parts are rough, and the tension leading up to every kill is palpable, making the more gross scenes as terror-inducing as possible, even with the macabre humor sprinkled in.

It gets to a point where I begin to understand that if I recognize the guest actor for the episode, they are headed for a bloody, disgusting ending.

I must give props to the props department for the work on those sickening, dismembered bodies we see in the latter half of the season.

Dolores Roach’s writers don’t miss any of the chances they get to poke some fun at the true-crime podcast-to-franchise pipeline that’s been created in the industry while also taking the time to comment on some of the more egregious cultural shifts Dolores misses out while she’s inside like the gentrification of her neighborhood in Washington Heights.

The story is a wild ride and a solid riff off Sweeney Todd. Though there are some pacing issues, and I wish that we were able to explore more of the stories of some of the characters we lose along the way, The Horror of Dolores Roach will keep viewers on the edge of their seats and have you screaming at your TV in frustration courtesy of that very mean cliffhanger ending.

Random Thoughts

• Judy Reyes, Marc Maron, and Cyndi Lauper are great additions to the series playing some forms of antagonists to Dolores’s plans of exacting her revenge on Dominic for what he’s done to her.
• Of all the people who know Dominic’s whereabouts, doesn’t it seem weirdly random that the true crime podcaster, Caleb Sweetzer, would know? Wouldn’t there be some sort of legal fail-safe that would keep him from knowing about him or even knowing his current location?

What did you think of The Horror of Dolores Roach? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Horror of Dolores Roach is currently streaming on Prime Video.

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