Dogtooth

A miserable, consistently worthless piece of work, Dogtooth follows three adult siblings – all of whom have been confined to their parents’ home for the entirety of their lives – as they engage in a series of progressively off-the-wall activities and adventures. Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has infused Dogtooth with an oppressively deliberate pace that immediately alienates the viewer, with the less-than-enthralling atmosphere compounded by Lanthimos’ refusal (or inability) to offer up even the most basic of cinematic elements. The ensuing lack of plot and character development ensures that the movie, for the most part, boasts the feel of an especially incompetent compilation of irrelevant sketches, as Lanthimos places an ongoing emphasis on the protagonists’ hopelessly pointless day-to-day exploits (eg the son has sex with his father’s coworker, the daughter hits herself in the face with a dumbbell, etc, etc). There’s little doubt that the movie’s total absence of momentum quickly transforms it into an epically interminable experience, while the frustrating absence of context – eg why are the parents doing this to their kids – indicates that Lanthimos has no loftier goal than to shock the viewer. By the time the laughably abrupt, utterly meaningless conclusion rolls around, Dogtooth has certainly established itself as one of the most unpleasant and pervasively wrongheaded art-house flicks to come around in quite some time – with the movie’s success among critics and awards groups alike nothing short of inexplicable.

1/2* out of ****