Dogtooth (2010)
Ever since I first discovered Yorgos Lanthimos with his 2015 film The Lobster, I have become a huge fan of his work. Every film he puts out sticks out in said year with most being full-on masterpieces such as The Killing of the Sacred Deer and The Favourite. Over the course of my "Best of the Decade" series, I am really excited to check out more of his filmography that I haven't seen before starting with Dogtooth.
Following 3 siblings who are kept separate from the rest of society in a world built of lies from their father. In my opinion this set up is easily the best thing about the movie, it is such an uncomfortable and weird world that these siblings live in that is very disturbing at times, but also pretty fascinating. I can't help but say that even though the hard to watch elements of this movie I was interested in this world and that it sucked me in like some fever dream. It is shocking enough to keep you on the edge of your seat and interesting enough to keep you engaged and questioning the whole thing. I just wish the story and plot of this film would have been more interesting, for most of this film instead of having an interesting narrative its a lot of following these siblings live their lives in this world with not much happening. It almost feels a slice of life movie in that way and they never really build a solid story for me to grab onto. Naturally, events occur but most of them fail to come together into a solid single story or plot. I found the style of this movie and its world outweighing the substance a lot of the time, which is a bad thing always but it does make this movie less interesting and impactful.
I also must warn that this film is not for everyone, not only is it pretty quirky by nature but its world is very dark and hard to watch at times. If you are someone who can't handle violence or sex this is not going to be the movie for you. It is extremely graphic and perverse at times which only adds to the discomfort that the film is going for in my opinion, but I can see it being a big turn off for most. At the end of the day, I do thing Dogtooth is a fine movie, it has an interesting setup an environment that is able to carry to movie enough to be considered good, but the plot is holding it back from being anything I would call amazing.