‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’ Is a Rotten ‘Sweeney Todd’ Riff
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“The Horror of Dolores Roach” is the kind of show that tries to do everything at once instead of doing one thing well. Is it a horror show? Is it a comedy? Is it a riff on “Sweeney Todd”? Is it a character study? Is it camp? Is it commentary? Yes, it’s all these things, and yes, other series have lumped many-a-genre and multiple goals into successful ongoing stories, but that first requires identifying what elements work well together.
Good horror isn’t just gore. Good comedy is, well, pretty subjective. But “Sweeney Todd” isn’t just about cannibalism, camp is earned, and commentary takes prolonged focus. The Amazon Prime Video series, adapted by creator, writer, and executive producer Aaron Mark from his one-woman play (“Empanada Loca”) and subsequent podcast (“The Horror of Dolores Roach”), never cooks any one ingredient long enough for its flavor to stand out in an overstuffed stew. Both thematically and logically, the eight-episode first season is a mess, so thoroughly overdone it’s impossible to savor even a few choice bites.
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It’s opening night, and “Dolores Roach” just earned a standing ovation. The play’s titular lead, Flora (Jessica Pimento), sits in her dressing room, wiping fake blood from her hands. Taped to her mirror are newspaper clippings with headlines like, “The Real-Life Sweeney Todd,” “Ex-Con Masseuse Identified in Uptown Cannibalism Scam,” and “From True Crime Podcast to Broadway” — rather blunt (and expository) hints at the story she’s telling on stage and the one we’re about to experience via flashback. After sending her fawning friends away (including Bryan Fuller, playing himself), Flora gets cornered by a surprise guest: the actual Dolores Roach (Justina Machado). “Are you going to murder me?” the actor asks. “No,” Dolores says. “Worse. I’m going to tell you shit […] shit you can’t wash off.”
With Flora as her hostage, Dolores recounts what really happened, starting in 2003 when she was living in Washington Heights and dating a marijuana dealer named Dominic. “I loved that man so fucking much,” Dolores says via voiceover. “I would’ve done anything for him. And I did.” Uh oh, the cops are at her door. Oops, there’s bricks of weed in her apartment walls, and damn, if Dominic is nowhere to be found. Dolores proves her love via a 16-year prison sentence, and when she’s finally let out, it’s 2019, there’s still no word from her boyfriend, and Washington Heights isn’t exactly what she remembered.
Within 15 minutes, “The Horror of Dolores Roach” already feels grating. The voiceover is a massive problem, despite Machado’s best efforts, because it’s often redundant, on the nose, or overwhelming. Barely one scene will transition to another without hearing Dolores’ exposition hammer home what’s happening, how she feels about it, or both. (Worse yet is when she trots out the dad jokes.) There’s promise in a few plot points, like the grim irony of people getting sent to prison over a substance many governments now profit from, or the rapid gentrification of Washington Heights. But where the podcast seemed to make the most of its themes, the series bungles these points, too.
Dolores isn’t just in prison for someone else’s crimes. She assaulted an officer. That charge may have been introduced to help explain her violent behavior later, but said behavior is never tied to her surely traumatizing prison stint, nor do co-showrunners Mark and Dara Resnik explore weed’s recent legality beyond a few off-hand quips. Dolores’ savagery later-on isn’t framed as a reaction to her unjust treatment by the American criminal justice system; nor is she taking back the power that’s been stripped from her by men and the courts. When the “twists” come with no rhyme or reason, she instead comes across as a bad stereotype: the crazy, hot-headed Latina. (“Dolores Roach” is a far cry from “Swarm,” another Prime Video series that explored female serial killers of color.)
Whiteness in Washington Heights is also treated with peculiar imprecision. When Dolores first reaches her old neighborhood, she’s greeted by a giant new Chipotle on one corner (and a gleaming T-Mobile across the street), but her first “What the fuck” comment is targeted at a hipster carrying a potted plant. Why a random white guy — on the streets of New York City — sets her off but corporate yuppification doesn’t is unclear, and the choice only gets more irritating when Dolores finds her favorite empanada shop, Empanda Loca, has survived gentrification… so far. Times are tough, and the business is barely holding on, so wouldn’t she be more upset that fast-food restaurants are pushing out her favorite places (and her favorite people who ran them)?
No matter. Within Empanada Loca waits Luis (Alejandro Hernandez), the one-time delivery boy who now runs the restaurant, but still harbors a massive crush on his preferred customer. He offers Dolores a place to stay and even suggests she put her prison education to practical use — aka, starting a massage parlor in their basement apartment. While locked up, Dolores earned the nickname “Magic Hands” (which, come on, even by prison standards is pretty unimaginative) for her amazing shoulder rubs, and she’s soon making decent cash despite her crude quarters.
To say how she starts killing customers and putting them into pastries may cross into spoiler territory, but to confirm that’s where “The Horror of Dolores Roach” ends up surely isn’t. The series wears its “Sweeney Todd” homage like an inflatable sumo suit — unmistakable in what it’s aiming for, but contorted to the extent it’s clearly an empty copy. “Dolores Roach” doesn’t delight in the macabre (let alone burst into song) so much as it deploys death when desperate. There’s gruesome moments here and there (some seen, some merely described in dialogue), but they don’t add up to anything worth the collective ick factor, and they regularly clash with the lighter, sitcom-y set-ups that prop up the middle episodes.
Even in eight, half-hour parts, the first season is stretched thin. The tone is all over the map, along with character motivations and plot logistics. Dolores isn’t killing to help herself out. Only a few victims “deserve” it, no matter how much leeway you give to vigilantes, and as the bodies stack up, there’s less and less rationale for each slaying. Soon, she’s little more than a murder addict, untethered from reality and — even with all that voiceover — her passionate impulses make no sense. Worse still, all these frustrations prevent any enjoyment of what should be guaranteed entertainment: Machado’s performance. (K. Todd Freeman, an excellent actor + everyone’s favorite “Rehearsal” partner, is also undermined, not to mention a few wasted cameos by welcome faces like Marc Maron and Judy Reyes.)
“If my life was a horror movie, I’d be yelling at myself to not go in,” Dolores narrates during one suspense-less scene. Consider this review a helpful echo of that thought: Dear readers, save yourselves.
Grade: C-
“The Horror of Dolores Roach” premieres all eight episodes of its first season Friday, July 7.
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