Dogtooth (2009)

Dogtooth parents guide

There is no US rating to lean on, so here is what we tagged: strong sex and nudity.

Scare

Mildly scary

A few tense or eerie moments.

Jump scares

None noted

Gore

No gore

Violence

Some violence

Some fighting or peril.

Sex and nudity

Strong

Strong means explicit or repeated sex, extended nudity, or sexual assault shown on screen, attempted or completed, even partly off screen. Any one of these is enough.

Language

Mild

Mild words like damn, hell or crap.

How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.

Three questions

Is Dogtooth scary?

Only a little. Dogtooth has a few tense moments, nothing that follows you to bed.

How gory is Dogtooth?

No gore and some violence. Squeamish viewers are fine here.

What is Dogtooth about?

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.

Cast and crew

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More like this feeling

Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.

• “a movie that will make me cry”
• “funny but not stupid, under two hours”
• “a thriller with a twist, no spoilers”

Lists with the same feel: Tearjerkers and Weird and surreal.