Dogtooth (2009)

Sadistic parents conduct perverse experiment in fucked-up parenting

Some films self-consciously strive for weirdness like an affected hipster with a handlebar moustache listening to a Sony Walkman. Other films are born weird, like Greece’s Dogtooth, a fully-realized oddity that feels like an alien culture trying to dress-up and play human. The film depicts a middle-aged couple who raise their three children, now young adults, in complete seclusion. In fact, not only can the kids not leave the house, but their sadistic parents purposefully teach them the wrong definitions of words, that house cats are nature’s most dangerous predator, and that Frank Sinatra is their grandfather and his songs are all about happy families. It’s a twisted metaphor for everything strange and unpleasant that can emerge from the family institution – the hermetic rules, the bitter competition, and the mixed-up Freudian sexuality. And while there is plenty of pitch-black humor, Dogtooth takes its premise to a very uncomfortable extreme. Take that as a warning, folks.