The Mannequin (2025) Movie Review: A sleek slasher derailed by an aggressively juvenile final act

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For years, horror movies have failed to do justice to Mannequins. The creepy as hell figures have always fascinated me because just looking at them gives me a certain type of eek that left me deeply unsettled. I mean, apart from the 1980 slasher “Maniac” (which seems to have inspired “The Mannequin”), there has hardly been a horror thriller that is set around these figures, and none of them have used them to induce creepy thrills.

Writer/Director John Berardo’s “The Mannequin” happens to just double down on that recurrence, with a narrative that slanders the name of the figure yet again. This is a narrative that barely uses them for plot convenience, but neither manages to help them build any form of creepy atmosphere or any sort of mythical or psychological lingerings that will conjure up fear or thrills in the viewers.

The plot follows Sophia (Gabriella Rivera) – a young and enthusiastic fashion designer who gets a steal deal on a long-abandoned L.A. factory that she decides to use to set up her studio and clothing line. Her supportive sister Liana (Isabella Gomez), who has been having issues with her boyfriend Peter (Maxwell Hamilton), is helping her out to get the huge place in line. The two girls are also best friends with Hazel (Lindsay LaVancy) – the loving, gentle one and Nadine (Shireen Lai) – who is getting married and is the more straight-forward one of the troupe.

However, terror strikes when Sophia is found dead with no reason in sight. Fast forward a year, and Liana is back at the property, and the girls are eager to understand why she wishes to heal her grief by staying in the same property that caused her sister’s death (I mean, anyone would be surprised by that stupid decision). It also doesn’t help that they soon realize that the place is possibly haunted by the ghost of a serial killer who used to decapitate models who would come there to get their photos taken.

Now, I am not going to lie, but “The Mannequin” is a pretty handsomely mounted and occasionally thrilling slasher. The filmmaker is able to create some shocking, blood-curdling imagery that really gets to you. Some chilling scenes in the prologue – which is shot in incredible black and white and the first two acts will make you hold your breath or squirm in disgust in multiple places.

Part of the problem lies in how the film is never able to settle. Initially, the narrative presents the themes of men trying to bottle up the beauty of women because they can’t seem to get them. However, Berardo quickly abandoned that for something more emotionally resonant – a core sense of detachment that women feel when they are taken for granted.

But then again, he jumps fences and tries to settle into grief and unresolved trauma getting people to act in different ways. But he just checks out again for an aggressively juvenile final act that is so superfluously stupid that you would be dumbfounded by how easy it is to ruin a film when your half-baked ideas do not lead to some form of resolve.

The rushed feeling ruins the entire enterprise and makes “The Mannequin” a barely realized supernatural slasher that can only be used as a part of John Berardo’s portfolio reel to showcase his talent in scene blocking and staging, not so much on the writing front, though.