Score: 2.5 / 5
In Short: Dogtooth is a stylish test of endurance. Exposing the audience to a horrific morale calamity but evading all opportunities to go beyond the initial shock.
Raising your kids on a remotely isolated ranch with no connection to the outside world isn't the most responsible thing a parent can do. In fact it's probably how the whole Clonus Horror thing started.
But if you were to also feed your captive juniors some brain-scrambling nonsense (a la clonus horror), and play on their juvinile imaginations into late adolescence: then there'll be little surprise when they blossom into a pack of misguided gollumites. Throw in some crispy nuggets of incest, season with violence and serve in a cardboard bucket of bizarre family rituals, and you've been served Dogtooth. A family-sized portion of harrowing subject matter, for (definitely not) the whole family to enjoy.
Of their achievements, chief of which include hitting each other with hammers and blaming it on ninja cats, killing said felines with garden shears and performing home dental surgery with workout gear.
It probably doesn't help that the parents are even stranger than the captive offspring. In fact, dad's a real heavyweight with the VCR Player (as pictured above).
In short, pointless meandering and sex scenes don't leave room for any real story.
Sadly the film ends just as it should be getting going. The only level of character progression is thinly spread and there's no morale redemption or big payoff. Not to say that every film needs these components to work, but Dogtooth wastes too much time to be an exception.
In Short: Dogtooth is a stylish test of endurance. Exposing the audience to a horrific morale calamity but evading all opportunities to go beyond the initial shock.
Raising your kids on a remotely isolated ranch with no connection to the outside world isn't the most responsible thing a parent can do. In fact it's probably how the whole Clonus Horror thing started.
But if you were to also feed your captive juniors some brain-scrambling nonsense (a la clonus horror), and play on their juvinile imaginations into late adolescence: then there'll be little surprise when they blossom into a pack of misguided gollumites. Throw in some crispy nuggets of incest, season with violence and serve in a cardboard bucket of bizarre family rituals, and you've been served Dogtooth. A family-sized portion of harrowing subject matter, for (definitely not) the whole family to enjoy.
Of their achievements, chief of which include hitting each other with hammers and blaming it on ninja cats, killing said felines with garden shears and performing home dental surgery with workout gear.
It probably doesn't help that the parents are even stranger than the captive offspring. In fact, dad's a real heavyweight with the VCR Player (as pictured above).
In short, pointless meandering and sex scenes don't leave room for any real story.
Sadly the film ends just as it should be getting going. The only level of character progression is thinly spread and there's no morale redemption or big payoff. Not to say that every film needs these components to work, but Dogtooth wastes too much time to be an exception.
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