Dogtooth

2009

1h 38m

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

2.5K

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6 Videos

87 Images

Drama

Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabulary. Any word that comes from beyond their family abode is instantly assigned a new meaning. Hence 'the sea' refers to a large armchair and 'zombies' are little yellow flowers. Having invented a brother whom they claim to have ostracized for his disobedience, the uber-controlling parents terrorize their offspring into submission.

Directors

Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers

Efthymis Filippou(screenplay by)

Yorgos Lanthimos(screenplay by)

Stars

Christos Stergioglou

Michele Valley

Hristos Passalis

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Videos6

Photos87

Top cast

Father

Mother

Son

Older Daughter

Younger Daughter

Christina

Colleague

Secretary

Dog Trainer

Directors

Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers

Efthymis Filippou(screenplay by)

Yorgos Lanthimos(screenplay by)

All cast & crew

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User reviews3

Review

Featured review

7/10

Unnamed parents (Christos Stergioglou and Michele Valley) are so obsessed with their children that they have, over the years, created an walled environment in which they see nobody but each other and never leave their substantial rural home. There is one exception, and this is "Christina" (Anna Kalaitzidou) who is brought in from time to time as the paid sex pal of their son (Christos Passalis). Father drives to work each day whilst the remainder of the family live what can only be described as a surreal existence where even words mean different things. Did you know that a zombie was really a buttercup in disguise? Things start to get a bit out of hand, though, when "Christina" starts a friendship with their younger daughter (Mary Tsoni) and the dynamic of indoctrination and intimidation starts to unravel a little. The children (all in their late teens or older) start to question the reliability of their parental information and to become restless for new information and freedom. The parents are having none of this, though, and this leads to some drastic action from the father and some even more from their younger daughter who devises a cunning plan to break free from this silken yoke. There's something spookily controlling about the way Yorgos Lanthimos presents this story to us. It's a bit of ignorance is bliss married to you don't miss what you never had and the result is a naiveté borne of three siblings who take on blind faith a scenario that they simply can't envisage being different. The performances from Stergioglu as the sometimes quite brutal father and from Kalaitzidou, their visitor, evoke some serious feelings of discomfort and the sight on the son parading around the garden as though he were a boy fifteen years younger is distinctly disconcerting. Is it plausible? You'd like to think not.

Geronimo196704 May, 2024